INSIDE THIS ANGELUS

The National Anglican Youth Conference is seeking a new camp location. See the Rector with your suggestions.

Our Boy Scout Troop will begin meeting again in October.

Children's Confirmation Classes are now meeting in Fr. Vinsel's basement conference room after 9:30 Mass on Sundays.

Men's Group meets on the first and third Wednesdays with Mass at 6:00 p.m. followed by supper, devotional and discussion.

Women of the Church will meet in November to plan the December 8 Episcopal Visitation celebration with Bishop Mote.

Our Youth Group will start meeting in October with a planning session as announced.

The Sunday School is off to a good beginning. We once again have a Nursery from 9:00 a.m. to noon.

An Exciting Halloween Party is planned for Friday, October 31. Watch the bulletin for details--or speak to Fr. Vinsel to volunteer to help.

Our Devotional Societies will meet in October: the Society of Mary for a Potluck and Rosary on Monday, October 27, preceded by 6:00 p.m. Mass.

Pledges: A number of our church members have fallen behind in their pledge payments. St. Mary's is not endowed and depends on its members for their financial support. 1997 has been an expensive year with many needed repairs to our buildings and the Consecration Celebration. We ask your help in ending the year "in the black."

TIP OF THE BIRETTA to Jean Fletschinger for her tireless labors on the parish gardens., to Bob Lockhart for organizing our Rummage Sale and to all our Coors Field volunteers--especially to Michael Moore, Cathy Lewis, Tanice Tait and Mary Wallsteadt.

A cave Jeremias found there, in which he set down tabernacle and ark and incense-altar, and stopped up the entrance behind him. There were some that followed; no time they lost in coming up to mark the spot, but find it they could not. -- 2 Machabees 2.5-6

After this, God's heavenly temple was thrown open, and the ark of the covenant was plain to view, standing in his temple.. -- Apocalypse 11.19.

The Son of God came to earth to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. The material world in which we live was, by his way of it, something immaterial; it didn't matter. We were not to be always worrying about our clothes being shabby, or wondering where our next meal was to come from; the God who fed the sparrows and clothed the lilies would see to all that. We were not to resent the injuries done to us by our neighbours; the aggressor was welcome to have a slap at the other cheek, and when he took away our greatcoat he was to find that we had left our coat inside it. Life itself, the life we know, was a thing of little value; it was a cheap bargain, if we lost life here to attain the life hereafter. There was a supernatural world, interpenetrating, at a higher level, the world of our experience; it had its own laws, the only rule we were to live by, its own prizes, which alone were worth the winning. All that he tried to teach us; and we, intent on our own petty squabbles, our sordid struggle for existence, cold-shouldered him at first, and then silences his protest with a cross.

His answer was to rise from the dead; and then, for forty days in the world's history, that supernatural life which he had preached to us flourished and functioned under the conditions of earth. A privileged few saw, with mortal eyes, the comings and goings of immortality, touched with their hands the impalpable. For forty days; then, as if earth were too frail a vessel to contain the mystery, the tension was suddenly relaxed. He vanished behind a cloud; the door of the supernatural shut behind him, and we were left to the contemplation of this material world, drab and barren as ever.

What was the first thing the apostles saw when they returned from the mount of the Ascension to the upper room? "Together with Mary"--is it only an accident that the Mother of God is mentioned just here, by name, and nowhere else outside the gospels? The Incarnate Word had left us, as silently as he came to us, leaving no trace behind him of his passage through time. No trace? At least, in the person of his blessed Mother, he had bequeathed to us a keepsake, a memory. She was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, the new Eve of the new Adam. That body of hers, still part of the material order of things, had housed and suckled God. As long as she lived, there would still be a link, a golden link, between this lower earth and Paradise. As long as she lived: and even if it was God's will that she, Eve's daughter, should undergo the death that was Eve's penalty, the penalty she had never incurred, her mortal remains would still be left with us, an echo from the past, an influence on our lives. We men, since we are body and soul, do honour even to the lifeless bodies which have housed the dead; Napoleon rests in the Invalides, Lenin at Moscow. The day would come when there would be pilgrimages from all over the world to the shrines of Peter and Paul at Rome, of James at Compostela. Was it not reasonable to hope that somewhere, at Jerusalem, perhaps, or at Ephesus, we should be privileged to venerate the mortal remains of her through whom salvation came to us? Or perhaps at Bethlehem, Bethlehem-Ephrata, this new Ark of God would rest, as the ark rested of old; "And now, at Ephrata, we have heard tidings of what we looked for"--the old tag from the Psalms should still ring true.

God disposed otherwise. Jewish tradition recorded that when Jerusalem was destroyed by the armies of Babylon, the prophet Jeremias took the ark of God away from the city, and buried it in some secret cleft of the rock; it was never seen again. Never again, except by S. John, in his vision on the isle of Patmos; he saw the ark of God but in heaven. And so it was with this new Ark of God, the virgin body that had been his resting-place. When and where she passed away from this earth, or in what manner, nobody can tell us for certain. But we know where she is. When Elias was carried up into heaven, the sons of the prophets at Jericho asked Eliseus if they might go out in search of him; "it may be," they said, "the spirit of the Lord has carried him off and left him on some hill-top or in some cleft of the valleys." He consented grudgingly, and when they returned from their fruitless errand, greeted them with the words; "Did I not tell you not to send?" So it is with the body of the blessed Virgin: nowhere in Christendom will you hear the rumour of it. So many churches, all over the world, eagerly claiming to possess the relics of this or that saint; who shall tell us whether John the Baptist sleeps at Amiens, or at Rome? But never of our Lady; and if any of us still hoped to find that inestimable treasure, the Holy Father has called off the search only the other day. We know where her body is, it is in heaven.

Of course, we knew it all along. For myself, I have never doubted the doctrine of the Assumption since I heard it preached forty-four years ago, in an Anglican church over at Plymouth. You see, we get it all wrong about body and soul, simply because our minds are dominated by matter. WE think it the most natural thing in the world that soul and body should be separated after death; that the body should remain on earth and the soul go to heaven, once it is purged and assoiled. But it isn't a natural thing at all; soul and body were made for one another, and the temporary divorce between them is something out of the way, something extraordinary, occasioned by the Fall. In our blessed Lady, not born under the star of that defeat, human nature was perfectly integrated; body and soul belonged to one another, as one day, please God, yours and mine will.

Long ago, in those fields of Bethlehem, Ruth had gleaned in the footsteps of her beloved; and he, secretly, had given charge to the reapers to drop handfuls of corn on purpose, so that she might fill her bosom the sooner. So he, whose reapers are the angels, would leave for his blessed Mother a special portion of those graces that were to enrich mankind. The child-bearing which brought, to us other, redemption from the fault of our first parents should bring, to her, exemption; the empty tomb, which assures us that our bodies will rise at the judgment, was for her the earnest of an immediate resurrection; Christ the first-fruits, and who should glean them but she? For that, heaven is the richer, earth the poorer. We can go to Lourdes, and offer adoration in the place where her feet stood; we cannot press with our lips some precious reliquary containing the hand that swaddled Christ. In a world so dominated by matter, in which matter itself seems to carry the seeds of its own destruction, there is no material object left that can link our destinies with hers.

And yet, is the loss all loss? When the dogma of the Assumption was defined a friend of mine, a very intelligent Mohammedan, congratulated me on the gesture which the Holy Father had made; a gesture (said he) against materialism. And I think he was right. When our Lord took his blessed Mother, soul and body, into heaven, he did honour to the poor clay of which our human bodies are fashioned. It was the first step towards reconciling all things in heaven and earth to his eternal Father, towards making all things new. "The whole of nature," S. Paul tells us, "groans in a common travail all the while. And not only do we see that, but we ourselves do the same; we ourselves, although we have already begun to reap our spiritual harvest, groan in our hearts waiting for that adoption which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery." That transformation of our material bodies to which we look forward one day has been accomplished--we know it now for certain--in her.

When the Son of God came to earth, he came to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. And as the traveller, shading his eyes while he contemplates some long vista of scenery, searches about for a human figure that will give him the scale of those distant surroundings, so we, with dazzled eyes looking Godwards, identify and welcome one purely human figure, close to his throne. One ship has rounded the headland, one destiny is achieved, one human perfection exists. And as we watch it, we see God clearer, see God greater, through this masterpiece of his dealings with mankind.

(reprinted from S. Clements Newsletter, September, 1997)

"A person may be faithful; he may have the power to utter hidden mysteries; he may be discriminating in the evaluation of what is said and pure in his actions. But the greater he seems to be, the more humbly he ought to act, and the more zealous he should be for the common good rather than his own interest."

(From a letter to the Corinthians by Pope St. Clement, Liturgy of the Hours, Vol. III, p. 456)

Q. Isn't it true that there are so many fragments of the "True Cross" that there would be enough wood to build a house?

A. Hardly. When one sees the minute fragments which are preciously hoarded as relics, and considers the comparative rarity of them, the question is where has most of the wood gone.

Q. There seem to be so many signs of the Cross to be made during Mass, the little ones before the Gospel, and the breast beating at the "Lord, I am not worthy." Must I really make them all?

A. Perhaps the better question is, why do you not wish to? The Faithful over many centuries have built up these little acts. No hierarchy ever ordered most of them; they were adopted by the Faithful themselves, and became universal. If you wish to avoid these, you might ask yourself why is my heart so cold? You are perhaps unconsciously identifying yourself with the world rather than with generations of the Faithful.

Q. If our Lady were preserved from Original Sin, does that not remove her from free will, or perhaps even her being truly human?

A. No, that is unless you believe that sin is the essence of humanity. If fact, the essence of humanity was to be sinless and beatific. Sin was the evil branch grafted on by Satan. Our Lady was conceived without original sin to be a temple fit for the Son of God in which to dwell; a diamond is not willingly cast into the mire. She, however, had every capacity to commit actual sin during her lifetime, and indeed with all the manifold temptations and difficulties in her life it is all the more astonishing that she did not. The omission of original sin in her make-up also served to make her like Eve at the beginning and, faced with the same choices and temptations, she took a different path. Above all, if Our Lady's having been conceived without original sin removed her free will and made her less than human, it would have done the same to her Son.

Q. Why do some Catholic parishes sit during the Creed at High Mass when it is sung as part of a composed Mass setting? If it is a profession of faith, shouldn't we all stand and recite or sing it together?

A. If the Creed were used as a profession of faith at Mass, it would be recited as every Mass. In fact, its use at joyous Masses, Sundays, and great feasts, shows that it is a profession of faith which is sung as a song of praise. For this reason, it is quite appropriate to sit; though we should always join in mentally and spiritually with all parts of the Mass.

Lord, help me to reflect the love of St. Paul for his fellow human beings. In my dealings with others, prompt me to be a slave to every man. In that way, Lord, may my every action reflect You and never myself. Amen

The primary task of the Guild of All Souls is to maintain a continuous chain of intercession for the souls of the departed and clearly its members faithfully fulfill this task. But the members of the Guild are also supposed to promote and encourage such intercessory prayer, that is, to try to convince those who do not practice it of its importance and value in the scheme of the Christian religion. Perhaps in recent years the Guild has not been noticeably active in forwarding what is after all one of its primary objectives. It may be that the work of promoting and encouraging prayer for the departed seems less urgent than in the days when the Guild was founded in 1873. After all, praying for the departed is reasonably widespread in the Church of England and certainly not confined to what may be described as "advanced" congregations, while the ASB services and publications like The Promise of His Glory have, however timidly, gone further in this direction as compared with the Book of Common Prayer.

Yet there remains still a good deal of prejudice and misunderstanding to be overcome. It appears that there will be strong opposition in the General Synod to the Inclusion in the new services of explicit prayer for the departed, even if this would only be optional. One suspects that many people take this attitude because they feel that such prayer pre-supposes a belief in purgatory, a doctrine which, at least in its western medieval form, was so strongly opposed by the sixteenth century Reformers. Members of the Guild need to be clear in their own minds why they wish to pray for the dead and to be able to give a good account of their reasons to questioners.

The great seventeenth century Anglican divines who defended praying for the departed always clearly divorced it from any particular view of the state of those who have gone from earthly life. They rested their case on the two great doctrines of the Creed which, very significantly, along with intercessory prayer, our Guild is also committed to promote, the Communion of Saints and the Resurrection of the Dear; as Jeremy Taylor wrote, by the practice (of prayer for the dead) the Church of England declares her faith in the Resurrection of the dead and her interest in the Communion of Saints, and that the Saints departed are a portion of the Catholic Church, parts and members of the Body of Christ."

Quite simply, we believe that the dead live on and that we may still have fellowship with them. Intercessions for those we know and love in this world creates a bond between us, a bond that is particularly Christian, when we think of them, remember them and instinctively bring them and their needs before God in prayer. That bond is not broken when our friends and loved ones have passed through the gate of death and prayer is the Church's authorized means for our fellowship with the departed. We with them, must still wait the general Resurrection, eagerly waiting, in S. Paul's words, in hope of the redemption of our body. We do not know, and we do not need to know, the precise conditions of the after-life. We believe only that the departed are in the hand of God, as they have been in their earthly life, and we continue to pray for them as we have prayed for them in their earthly life, that God will supply whatever they may need and that they may grow in grace as they respond to His will for them.

Prayer for the departed, then, springs inevitably from belief in what is involved in the doctrines of the Communion of Saints and the Resurrection. These doctrines are held in common by all orthodox Christians. Members of the Guild are surely called to strengthen their own belief in those doctrines and to demonstrate their reality in their daily lives.

by the Rev'd J. R. Porter, Sometime Professor of Theoplogy in ExeterUniversity

(Reprinted from S. Clement's Newsletter, August, 1997)

To paraphrase "Alice in Wonderland," things are becoming more and more curious and not what they seem to be.

New words define old sins: homosexuality has become an "alternative lifestyle," and abortion is "freedom of choice." The new media buzzwords are "status" and "diversity."

Anyone who ever said that words don't matter should be called to account: words to express ideas and values. The new order in American society is offering up a new language, but the basic menu hasn't changes. Just the titles have been altered to confuse the unsuspecting.

It is becoming difficult to remember how many things American Christians used to take for granted. We have seen the importance of the family denied, the sanctity of human life overturned and respect for authority and order openly challenged. It is as if a legion of demons had been turned loose on our culture.

A moral revolution is under way and all the old values are under attack. The focus is no longer the good of society and the integrity of the family, but rather the desires of the individual and rights of almost any fringe group.

The temptation is to give up or at least to compromise. The moral minority is in charge, and the risk of resisting it appears too great.

For Christians, these days of New Age values shouldn't be a temptation to quit. Instead, they should be a time of testing.

Like Jesus in the wilderness, we can make this a time of glory rather than of defeat. The seeming aloneness of the Christian believer is a lie. We are never alone: our God is always with us. It is times like this that make us recognize His power and love.

We can never make a deal with evil and win. No compromise with darkness can bring us into the light. Jesus Christ saw the cross at the end of his earthly ministry, but he stayed the course. It is easy to have a sudden, exhilarating burst of courage. But the real test is to look ahead and see the hardships and the assaults and still keep going. Real courage is the courage that can see the cross ahead and still fight the battle.

To circle our spiritual wagons and huddle down in our spired bunkers is not the answer. We have to fight, even if it costs us our dearest possessions. A Christian has to see the glory beyond the cross like Jesus did. Suffering has meaning and positive value. It is how Jesus went to his father. It is how we go to our God.

Changes in language don't change the truth. Conscience, morality and revealed truth are still right and good. God does not change, nor do his promises. His mills grind no matter what men do.

Jesus saw death as a door to eternity: our struggles for what is true are our passage into the light. To be rejected of men is not to fail, it is our opportunity to witness and strengthen our commitment and faith. The great lesson of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that evil does not win in the end. In the end, God always wins.

Jesus said, "Be of good cheer, I have over come the world: now is our chance to do the same. Throughout Christian history, the church has been watered with the blood of its martyrs. Our time may become a time of suffering and witnessing--or even of martyrdom. But in the end, the darkness always loses.

In the present struggle for American culture, there can be no quitting nor compromise. As Jesus showed us, without a cross there is no crown.

by the Very Rev. Stephen Wallsteadt

The sixth stained glass window crafted by Sandy Fifield depicts the Conception of Our Lord as the Angel Gabriel spoke God's words to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The ray of light is the voice of God speaking through his angelic messenger. The vase symbolizes Mary as the Chosen Vessel of the Lord, the heart her compassionate heart, and the lilies the flowering of her sinless life. The pillar prefigures the Passion of our Lord (he was tied to a post and whipped) and the purple iris his death on the Cross. The gift of an anonymous donor, it has the inscription "Miracles Happen" at the donors request. We anticipate that the other three windows will be in by next fall.

S. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

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