Theotokos

From the very moment you walk in the door of our house you can not escape but notice what is important to me. As you enter on your right is an icon of Our Lady and the Baby Jesus, a stoup portraying the same imagery and a plaque with the Hail Mary written out in French. To your left is a crucifix and cross and in front of you is a large portrait of our three children. Now while I accept for many of you reading this, veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary is tantamount to idolatry. However I would ask you to persevere with what I am going to say, as whether you venerate her as a saint or not, Our Lady should heavily influence your life as a Christian and as a parent.

For me Marian Piety can not be an optional extra, she is the Theotokos (Mother of God). From the Annunciation onwards she not only commits her spiritual life to God, she commits her entire physical being to God. She becomes a living breathing Tabernacle. Through this awesome gift to God she brings to the Divine a human frailty. Without Our Lady, God could not have become fully human, as he had to be born of a Woman. He placed his immense power into a tiny baby entirely at first dependent on this young innocent woman.

At this point we can begin to look at how Mary is relevant to us all and in particular to our Lenten reflections.  Mary's journey did not end here in this stable filled with all the joy and splendour of her sons birth. She was his Mother and so lived alongside him as he grew  up and therefore committed herself to his Ministry. She was there at the Passion too, standing at the foot of the cross consumed by grief unable to comprehend at that moment what was yet to come.Here is demonstrated the joy of new life, the uncertainties of Maternal love and finally the deep desolation of the grief of someone who loses a child before they themselves die. These are in part emotions all Mothers experience, the intense moments of joy, the fear of loss and the pain of their child's sadness. For some Mothers that true and total desolation of the loss of a child is also something they have to endure. For all of us who live a Christian life there is the same emotional roller-coaster within our Faith. The intense joys at the moments we know God is there, the lonely feeling of abandonment when  we feel he is not there. Here is where Mary becomes our intercessor with God, for she too has felt and lived these feelings as a Mother to Jesus. She understands the peaks and troughs of Christian life and can pray for us. She becomes our Spiritual Mother, a place of comfort and intercession.

There are so many pathways in which I could expand on how Mary should influence the way in which we live out our Faith. I am sure in time I will explore others with you, as the way in which Mary lived her life has had a great influence on the way I live mine. But for this Lenten period I have been considering whether I can commit my life to Christ so totally as Our Lady did, with all the the pain and joy that submission entails.

Finally, I would like to leave you with this prayer:-

Mary, teach me to say "Yes,
I am the handmaid of the Lord.
Let all he wills be done in me.
May his Spirit overshadow me, his love be fruitful in me,
his joy abound in my heart."
Let there be no "Yes,but..."
which is really a cover for "No."
Let it all be "Yes", plain and simple,
a "Yes" spoken in trust to the One who is eternally faithful.
Amen.

Walking in someone else's shoes.

As the alarm went off this morning, the most I could have to grumble about is the impertinence of it waking me up so early. I have a lovely flat, that is warm, has water on tap, flushing toilets, clothes for us all and more food than we really need to have. In other countries, people will have woken up to war, violence, a shack, no heating, a long walk to clean water, little clothes and for many no or very little food. This Lent I can choose to fast because I have food to choose not to have, for so many this is not a choice. Despite this reality many of them wake up with more gratitude and faith in God than many of us here.

We live a life crammed full of material objects, therefore it has become difficult to be objective about what is really a necessity and what is not. Lent is about examining ourselves through removing the unessential parts of our lives to give our cluttered lives space to allow God in. If we are to take this journey through the wilderness to it's end, some of what we have sacrificed has to become a positive influence in this world. This should be the case every day, not just Lent. But this particular part of the Church year allows us more space to make our lives and prayers do something more.

Therefore this Holy Week, I am sacrificing my shoes and socks. In preparation for this I spent Ash Wednesday barefoot and will spend the daylight hours of each Friday of Lent and the three day pilgrimage to Walsingham barefoot as well. In doing this I give up what we consider essential, but for many would be a luxury. It will hopefully encourage me to reflect on the paths I choose to take in my life, I am hoping it will encourage you to reflect on what you can sacrifice out of your pockets. I am doing this for Us. (the united society, what many of you may have known as USPG). In redesigning their name they came up with the slogan "Us standing together".  This is what I hope I am doing for a week, standing together in solidarity with those less fortunate than ourselves.

Please consider what you can give, in money or prayer. My just giving page is:-
https://www.justgiving.com/account/your-pages/Hannah-Phillips7

Cups of Mission.

As a country, you would be forgiven for thinking that tea is the solution to all the ills we encounter in our lives. In many ways this is true, but it is not the tea itself that helps ease our burdens but the one bearing the cup.

A couple of weeks ago I had the fortune to be present at Merton for a discussion on mission. The conclusion of which was that mission is a word now often associated with colonnialism, one of the less endearing attributes in Church history. So the word Mission has in itself become one that has overtones of domination. It also appears to bring to mind in some non believers that stereotypical Christian with a bible in hand quoting scripture as the answer to all. Neither of these unfortunate images should really be what mission is about. Mission should be about living a Christ like life daily, the mission of sacrificing our lives for a greater good.

Here we come back to the cups of tea, slices of cake and a couple of biscuits. Since being at theological college with my husband, it has brought home the necessity of these tools as a way to bring mission to the modern day person. When Christ breaks bread the night before he is killed, he reveals to us the importance of sharing food to bond. When the Priest breaks bread at Mass he reminds us through his actions and liturgy how sharing spiritual food can bring us together in forgiveness and salvation. When we sit down with a friend or stranger who is struggling and offer them tea and cake, we bring them to our table and share a life giving necessity. When we do it with the genuine love and hope we start to create the basis of mission. In sharing what we need to fuel our bodies life, we are giving a small bit of our life to the person before us. We can offer them hope and forgiveness through our conversation.We bring friendship through our actions and therefore we bring Christ to them.

In a sermon the other day, Father was talking about encountering someone asking about the Christian faith for the first time and the words he used to describe it. The words were simply "Jesus Christ".
These two words and all they embody should be at the centre of all we do and say. If they are not at the very centre of our being, then our life as a Christian will be some what lacking. Though we may not be able to work the miracles that Our Lord could. We can through sacrificing our needs on a daily basis, to understand the needs of others and to put them first, bring Jesus Christ to others. Once you bring him into their lives, they can not help but ask the questions. Then maybe those questions will turn into a faith.

Ash Wednesday and Lent

While I very much promise not to throw a Blog Post at you every five minutes, today is too bigger day not to.

Out into the wilderness went Our Lord, to examine himself and be tempted, but also to grow in the knowledge and love of his Father. It is tempting to see Lent as a very negative part of the Church calender. We are rather inclined to dwell on the burden of what we are sacrificing to much.  Whether you are fasting, giving up an addiction or just giving up something you consider important to you, it is important not to see these challenges purely as something you have to do. It is, of course, right that at certain times we sacrifice our opulent lifestyles as a gift to God. It can be all to easy to turn a blind eye to how much we have, when that is all we see.

So we cast ourselves out into the wilderness of loss and temptation. This is a positive gesture though. When you stop focusing on your own self sacrifice, you begin to see how you are learning about your faith and yourself. You begin to bloom in the desolation and learn to approach the temptation with a joyful resistance rather than as wearisome burden. As Jesus, stood in the desert, taunted and teased by Satan, he stood sure in this joyful resistance. Knowing what was coming was far more bountiful than the immediate offer.

So we as a family are giving things up, all of us give up Meat and Snacks. My second son always gives up his bed and sleeps on the floor to identify with the homeless. I will also give up my shoes and socks for Holy week in order to raise money for Us.

But also we will take up saying compline together. In this shared discipline I am hoping that we will grow together in the knowledge of the Father. That we will accept our sacrifices with grace knowing what was sacrificed for us, and what comes to us through that sacrifice. 

So today when you receive the ashes from your Priest, as you confess and turn away from your sins. As you remember from whence you came and to where you will return. Do so not thinking of the burden of what you will give up, but with the anticipation of that you will receive through your gifts to God.

An amendment

I have re- read what I wrote, and I realised that the last paragraph did not say what I meant. So here is the amended paragraph.

To build a relationship with God, you should to listen to the truths he presents before you. No matter how hard it is, you have to accept them and work with them. You can not separate religion and relationship, they go hand in hand. You should work at having a first class relationship with both.   

1st Class Religion,2nd Class Relationship or 1st Class Relationship, 2nd Class Religion

This morning at Mass, I was challenged with question above. Put another way, is my relationship with God put in second place to my religion. A poignant question for me at the moment as I am very much finding my feet after a long journey round various religions and opinions. I have experienced the good and bad of every religion I have encountered. The  result of all these encounters has been that for a very long time I have had a belief but not a faith. Many religions, so to speak, but no actual relationship with God. 
You envisage a nomadic soul, but a great deal of this seeking has been on one path. The path of the Anglican Church, which is the one I still follow. There are however many different paths within the Anglican faith.

What the Homily brought to mind this morning, is how easy it was to just follow the popular path. To follow a particular type of religious life, just because everyone else is. Doing that is what had caused my lack of relationship with God. I had been swept along on a current without stopping to examine what would deepen my relationship with God.

One day early in the new year about two years ago, I found myself in a Church the like of which I had not seen since I had embarked on the Anglican tradition. I knew they existed, I knew I sympathised but had never encountered it. This Church and the people in it and the friendships that have developed out of it, have taught me what it is to build a relationship with God again. Foot step by foot step I am finding my way along the path to understanding God again. Tip toe by tip toe I am learning to accept who I am and how I relate to the Church.

 It had been easy to seek peace in money, belongings, and secular ideals. It had been easy to think that just attending any Church on a Sunday would make a meaningful relationship with God. It is much harder to acknowledge that like your human relationships, the one you have with God needs to be worked at. It is fortunate for me and I am sure for many others, that God is infinitely more patient than his human children.
Behind the surface of, what has been described to me as "The great grand show, we put on for Jesus", is a deep and meaningful theology. Beyond the spectacle of  Mass is a rule of life that requires work and sacrifice, but brings with it a peace and tranquillity I spent many years trying to find.

To many who do not understand High Anglo-Catholic worship, it may look fussy and stand offish. It is through the meticulousness of each part of our life and faith, that we give God our best. It is in the daily rule of office and Mass that we can build our understanding of God. When we fail, it allows us to see the relentless patience and forgiveness that God has for us.  It is in trying our best to live this life we see the hope that God places before us unfailingly.

To have a first class relationship with God, you have to be true to yourself, your beliefs and your faith. To falter in any of these and you place between you and God a barrier.