Reflection on the Cross, Salvation, and Community

One of the great blessings of the Great Paschal Days is the recognition of our unity within the Body of Christ, the deep intimacy that comes in knowing that our Lord died for us and has given us life through the power of the cross. We are drawn together as a believing community in love and witness. Unlike any other time of the year, the Triduum brings God's family together to remember, to celebrate, and to support one another in this time of solemn and ecstatic joy.

Anglicanism and Saint Benedict

Recently, someone asked about why the daily readings from the Rule of Saint Benedict are presently on the blog. After all what does the founder of monasticism have to do with the Episcopal Church?

Benedict of Nursia, the Abbot of Monte Cassino, in 540 has greatly influenced the Anglican Communion. By its very nature, Anglicanism, with its emphasis on corporate worship, the ongoing recitation of the psalter in the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, the prayerful and reflective reading of Holy Scripture, and the necessity of personal prayer and discipline are grounded in Benedictine spirituality. The parish system, in most provinces of the Anglican world evolved from the monastic community which gathered tenant farmers around it.

Historically, our church is rooted in the monastic life of English Christianity. Those who influenced the faith and spiritual life, in the early centuries were Ninian, who brought a missionary form of monasticism to England before the end fo the fourth century, Germanus, Patrick, Columba, Augustine of Canterbury, etc.

The Reformation in the sixteenth century did not eliminate the essentials of the Benedictine spirit. With the Book of Common Prayer, 1549 and following, the influence of the Benedictine life became accessible. It is extremely important to recognize that the English Reformation had no towering reformer, like Luther or Calvin, not a theological doctrine or a moral code, but a book of liturgical prayer. In this fundamental respect alone, the Anglican Reformation had a clearly Benedictine spirit.

Dom Robert Hale, O.S.B. Cam.

Good Friday

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

We glory in your cross, O Lord,
and praise and glorify your holy resurrection;
for by virtue of your cross
joy has come to the whole world.

Collect of the Day, BCP, 276
Anthem 1, BCP, 281

The Rule of Saint Benedict

Whether a Monastic Should Receive Letters or Anything Else

On no account shall a monastic be allowed
to receive letters, blessed tokens or any little gift whatsoever
from parents or anyone else,
or from his brothers,
or to give the same,
without the Abbot's permission.
But if anything is sent him even by his parents,
let him not presume to take it
before it has been shown to the Abbot.
And it shall be in the Abbot's power to decide
to whom it shall be given,
if he allows it to be received;
and the brother to whom it was sent should not be grieved,
lest occasion be given to the devil.

Should anyone presume to act otherwise,
let him undergo the discipline of the Rule.