Celebrating the Seasons. Robert Atwell
We shall be blessed with clear vision if we keep our eyes fixed on Christ, for he, as Paul teaches, is our head, and there is in him no shadow of evil. St Paul himself and all who have reached the same heights of sanctity had their eyes fixed on Christ, and so have all who live and move and have their being in him.
As no darkness can be seen by anyone surrounded by light, so no trivialities can capture the attention of anyone who has eyes on Christ. The one who keeps his eyes upon the head and origin of the whole universe has them on virtue in all its perfection; on truth, on justice, on immortality, and on everything else that is good, for Christ is goodness itself.
‘The wise then, turn their eyes toward the One who is their head, but fools grope in darkness.’ No one who puts a lamp under a bed instead of on a lampstand will receive any light from it. People are often considered blind and useless when they make the supreme Good their aim and give themselves up to the contemplation of God, but Paul made a boast of this and proclaimed himself a fool for Christ’s sake. The reason he said, ‘We are fools for Christ’s sake,’ was that his mind was free from all earthly preoccupations. It was as though he said, ‘We are blind to the life here below because our eyes are raised toward the One who is our head.’
And so, without board or lodging, he travelled from place to place, destitute, naked, exhausted by hunger and thirst. When people saw him in captivity, flogged, shipwrecked, led about in chains, they could scarcely help thinking him a pitiable sight. Nevertheless, even while he suffered all this at the hands of others, he always looked toward the One who is his head and he asked: ‘What can separate us from the love of Christ which is in Jesus? Can affliction or distress? Can persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger or death?’ In other words: What can force me to take my eyes from him who is my head and to turn them toward things that are contemptible?
Paul bids us follow his example: ‘Seek the things that are above,’ he says, which is really only another way of saying: ‘Keep your eyes on Christ.’
The Third Sunday of Epiphany
A Reading from The Vision of God by Kenneth Kirk
Our Lord has promised the vision of God as a guerdon to the pure in heart. It is extraordinary – especially in view of the prominence which the thought had attained in contemporary religion, and the high relief into which New Testament theology was about to throw it – that the sentence ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’ seems to stand without even an echo in the Synoptic tradition. But this judgement is at best superficial. In actual fact the idea of the vision dominates our Lord’s teaching. Ideas are not conveyed by words alone: emphasis often serves to express them even better than direct enunciation. And the moment we seek to discover the emphasis of the Lord’s teaching, as the Synoptists record it, the truth becomes evident. It was specifically and above all a teaching about God.
Jesus ‘came preaching the good news of God’. That he spoke also of the kingdom of God makes no difference to this fact: for if anything is certain as the result of modern research, it is that the kingdom, in Jesus’ thought, whether it means ‘realm’ or ‘kingship’, is wholly bound up with the character of God. It is something in which he is to come – not a state of things prepared for his coming by human effort. It is true, of course, that Jesus also spoke, and that constantly, of the character and behaviour necessary for those who would ‘inherit’, ‘enter into’, or ‘possess’ the kingdom; and that in so doing he purified, simplified, and breathed new life into the ethical code of Judaism. This is no more than to say that, like all great teachers, he spoke both of God and of man, or preached both doctrine and ethics. But whereas contemporary Judaism laid all the stress on man – that is to say on ethics, on what man has to do to fulfil the will of God – it is surely true to say that by contrast the emphasis of Jesus’ teaching is upon God, rather than upon man – upon what God has done, is doing, and shall do for his people.
So he tells of the divine Fatherhood which watches over the lilies, the ravens, and the sparrows; which sends rain upon the just and the unjust alike; which understands our needs and gives to us liberally; which is patient and long-suffering. He tells of a God always ready to welcome the prodigal, to search for the lost sheep, or to give in his pleasure the kingdom to his flock; and of a heaven where there is infinite joy over the sinner that repents. God sees in secret and shall reward openly; God sows his seed far and wide with a lavish hand, and reveals his innermost truths to babes and sucklings. There is another side to the picture; but it is still a picture of God, though it represents him – whenever the time shall come that there is no more space for repentance – as a judge before whom there is no excuse.
For all the ethical teaching in the gospel, it seems impossible to deny that Jesus’ primary thought and message was about God, and that human conduct in his mind came in a second and derivative place.
Note: If a reading about Cana of Galilee is required, see either alternative reading for Epiphany 2 or Tuesday after Trinity 9.
Monday after Epiphany 3
A Reading from a commentary on the psalms
by Ambrose of Milan
Let your door stand open to receive Christ, unlock your soul to him, offer him a welcome in your mind, and then you will see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, and the joy of grace. Throw wide the gate of your heart, stand before the sun of the everlasting light that shines on every one. This true light shines on all, but if any close their windows they will deprive themselves of eternal light. If you shut the door of your mind, you shut out Christ. Though he can enter, he does not want to force his way in rudely, or compel us to admit him against our will.
Born of a virgin, he came forth from the womb as the light of the whole world in order to shine on all. His light is received by those who long for the splendour of perpetual light that night can never destroy. The sun of our daily experience is succeeded by the darkness of night, but the sun of holiness never sets, because wisdom cannot give place to evil.
Blessed then is the person at whose door Christ stands and knocks. Our door is faith; if it is strong enough, the whole house is safe. This is the door by which Christ enters. So the Church says in the Song of Songs: ‘The voice of my brother is at the door.’ Hear his knock, listen to him asking to enter: ‘Open to me, my sister, my betrothed, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is covered with dew, and my hair with the moisture of the night.’
When does God the Word most often knock at your door? When his ‘head is covered with the dew of night’. He visits in love those in trouble and temptation, to save them from being overwhelmed by their trials. His head is covered with dew or moisture when those who are his body are in distress. That is the time when you must keep watch so that when the bridegroom comes he may not find himself shut out, and make his departure. If you were to sleep, if your heart were not wide awake, he would not knock and go away; but if your heart is watchful, he knocks and asks you to open the door to him.
Our soul has a door; it has gates. ‘Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of glory will enter.’ If you open the gates of your faith, the King of glory will enter your house in the triumphal procession in honour of his passion. Holiness too has its gates. We read in Scripture what the Lord Jesus said through his prophet: ‘Open for me the gates of holiness.’
It is the soul that has its door, its gates. Christ comes to this door and knocks; he knocks at the gates. Open to him; he wants to enter, to find his bride waiting and watching.
Tuesday after Epiphany 3
A Reading from The Scale of Perfection by Walter Hilton
You can grow in knowledge if you take pains to set your heart most upon one thing. That thing is nothing other than a spiritual desire toward God – to please him, love him, know him, see him and have him, here by grace in a little feeling, and in the glory of heaven with a full being. If you nourish this desire, it will teach you well which is sin and which is not, and which is good, and which is the better good. And if you are willing to fasten your thought to it, it will teach you all you need and get you all that you lack. And therefore, when