The crown of Christ : being spiritual readings for the liturgical year

Front matter

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Contents

THE LITURGICAL YEAR ; Introduction

THE ADVENT SPIRIT ; First Sunday in Advent

READING THE APOCALYPSE .

I. Che Liturgical Wear

HRISTIANITY is the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

This knowledge is not of the intellect only, for that may lead to mere interest in the character and work of Christ, such as the study of the biography of any great man may produce. The knowledge required of a Christian is the knowledge of faith, springing from the heart as well as from the intellect, the knowledge that “ buildeth up” (otcodomec),! because it is inspired by love of Him Who is known not only intellectually, but affectively. It is a kind of personal trust in Christ, like that spoken of by St. Paul when he said, “I know Whom I have believed,’ or “Whom | have trusted.”* This belief of the Apostle was inseparable from love and self-surrender, because real faith in Jesus Christ involves the acceptance of His claim to be the Son of God, and the consequent obedience to the will and word of God revealed by Jesus Christ.

Cor. viii. 3. 25a) ind 2s

A Introduction

Therefore St. Paul goes on to say, “I am persuaded — that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

A knowledge of Jesus Christ that did not involve a loving self-surrender would profit little or nothing. It is to help us towards the knowledge, love, and service of Jesus Christ that the Church observes the Liturgical Year. We have to become the friends of Jesus Christ, to enter into His mind, His heart; to listen to His words, watch His actions—nay, more, we have to try and so familiarise ourselves with His way of looking at things, that by degrees we ourselves may instinctively think, act, and speak as we may believe He Himself would have thought, acted, and spoken had He been placed in our circumstances. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” is the apostolic command to the Philippian converts. The reason for this close imitation of Jesus Christ is not hard to understand when we remember that man was created in the image and likeness of God, that this image was marred in the Fall, that Jesus Christ is the “image of the invisible God,’? and that consequently by likeness to the Incarnate Word we are enabled to regain the Divine image. “God, Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”? God is with us—our “ Immanuel ”8—in Jesus Christ. We were created to know, love, and serve God,

The Liturgical Year 5 and we are enabled to do this by knowing, loving, and serving our Lord, Who is God “ manifest in the flesh.” 4

In the observance of the Liturgical ‘Year the Church ~calls us to the side of her Lord. She dramatises His earthly life. and summons her children to re-live it continually. Before our Lord ascended into heaven He gave a command to His Apostles, who represented the hierarchy of His Church: “Go ye,” He said, “into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.”? “Go,” that is to say, “make known My life, words, and work, all that I have said and done on earth; go, make disciples of all nations.”

It was not enough that His Apostles should preach this or that doctrine, or administer divinely ordained sacraments; they must make known Jesus Christ Himself, for “this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast scrty.®

Every event in our Lord’s incarnate life is a part of the Gospel, and therefore obedience to His command, “Preach the Gospel,’ involves the presentation of His whole life and work to the world. It would have been possible to do this by mere oral teaching, but it would have been a less effectual way of proclaiming the Gospel than that which the Church has been divinely cuided to follow. She teaches us not only to hear, but, as it were, to see our Lord in His life on earth. We must be with Him at Bethlehem, in the wilderness, in pare tit, il, 16, 2 St. Mark xvi. 15. $ St. John xvii. 3.

6 Introduction

Gethsemane, and on Calvary. We must meet Him from time to time in the great Forty Days; we must witness His. Ascension, and await the coming of the Spirit of Truth with the little band of the faithful in the upper chamber at Jerusalem. The spirit of each event that the Church commemorates in her yearly round of Fasts and Feasts must be brought into our own actual experience. In order that this may be accomplished we have to realise that the Church is the mystical Body of Christ, and that she not only speaks in the name of her Lord, but continues His presence on earth—no longer indeed “after the flesh,’? but not the less really, since it is in and by His Church that our Lord fulfils the promise, “I will not leave you comfortless (orphans): I will come to you.”? It is this fact that makes the observance of the Liturgical Year no bare commemoration of past events, but in a certain sense a continual renewal of the earthly life of the Incarnate Word.

The Church is able by the grace of the Divine Spirit to breathe into the Festivals the breath of life, so that her children may receive at each Feast or Fast the gift or grace peculiar to the mystery commemorated. All the graces that cluster around the Birth of Christ, and all the spiritual help that belongs to His Nativity are, for instance, placed in a special way within our reach during Christmastide. To bestow these special and appropriate graces is ¢ken, more than during the rest tea Cor.an. 10, 2 St. John xiv, 18,

The Liturgical Year 7 of the year, the purpose of the Holy Ghost. The special truths that belong to each mystery of the Christian. Year are, we believe, rendered especially luminous in the light that comes from the keeping of the seasons of the Church.

It is this fact that makes it so important to approach these yearly commemorations in a sympathetic spirit. We can hardly keep them with profit unless we throw ourselves into the spirit of the Church, and for the time put aside all that belongs not only to the worldly spirit, but even to the Church at some other time. Not, of course, that we can for a moment forget the “finished. work” of our Lord, or rather, that His work in one sense is a finished work. We cannot and ought not to keep Christmas, for instance, as though Calvary had not yet been disclosed to us. There will be suggestions of the coming Cross even in the brightness that encircles the manger bed; but what is needful is to let the special spirit of the Feast pervade every other mystery that may come into our mind at the time. The Cross is never absent from the mind of the Church, but the light that hovers round it catches its tint from the mystery which is, just at the time, being brought before us. The light around the Cross is manifold, many-hued as the “rainbow round about the throne”; it is glad at one time, and sombre at another.

To attain this sympathy with the spirit of the Church must be our prayer, and our efforts must second our petitions by our use of the means that may be within

8 Introduction our reach to foster and develop the Liturgical spirit, to feel with the Church, and, as far as possible, throw ourselves into the spirit of the Church in her obseryance of the round of Feasts and Fasts—each recalling an event in the Master’s life, or illuminating some mystery of the faith,—which go to make up the Liturgical Year.

Think for a moment what the Liturgical Year means.? It opens with Advent, in offices full of a strange mingling of expectation, regret, hope, and fear; the solemn anticipations of coming judgment blend with the joyful anticipation of the near approach of a Saviour; the deep notes of the Dzes /re?® passing into the jubilant invitation of Venz, venz, Emmanuel.® The sound of His coming seems to become almost. audible—a sound sometimes in the far-off distance, sometimes near, as of the wheels of His chariot over the hills where the twilight hovers: an echo of the words, “ Behold, I come quickly !”

Christmas follows, bringing with it the peaceful, silent adorations of Mary and Joseph and of the shepherds; the joyful hymns of the angels and the carols of the little children, who down the centuries gather around the crib of Bethlehem.

Then comes Epiphany with its journey of the strange

1 The following description of the Liturgical Year is from my book, The Sorrows of the King.

“ «Day of wrath, O day of mourning.” 5 **O come, O come, Emmanuel.”

The Lituretcal Year 9 and dusky kings from out the darkness into the radiance of that new Light which has so lately risen to “lighten the Gentiles.” The brightness of the Epiphany is followed by the sombre violet and the hushed organs of Lent, when the Church is, with her Saviour, “led up of the Spirit into the wilderness” to fast, and watch, and to pray with Him during those forty days; Lent, with its chanted J/cserere, striving to bring home to fallen man a sense of sin, and seeming to fail, until in the gloom of its closing days the Church, in order to force her children to dwell upon every detail of the Passion, veils the crucifix! and the figures of Mary and the saints—hides them all, as if even they might distract us for a moment from the awful tragedy of the last hours of her dying Master. But hardly has the strange majesty of the Passion Sunday Verlla Regis? died away, than on Palm Sunday there is, for a moment, a pause in the sadness, and Holy Week opens with the last glimmer of triumph that the fickle people offered to their rejected Messiah. The palms wave as the procession goes its way; but we have hardly finished our Gloria, laus, et honor® before we are startled with the wild cry for

1 The veiling of the crucifix and other objects. with purple before Passion Sunday is symbolical of our Lord’s hiding of Himself mentioned in the Gospel for that Sunday; and also may suggest that we are not to anticipate the events of Holy Week, but step by step to follow our Lord. On Good Friday, therefore, the crucifix is fitly unveiled.

2 «The Royal Banners forward go.”

8 ** All glory, laud, and honour,”

IO Introduction blood that breaks in upon the solemn chanting of the Passion. The end draws near, and the long, wailing strains of Tenebre are like the threatening gusts of wind that surge and die down before the storm breaks. For an instant, on Maundy Thursday, something of the old splendour returns to the Liturgy, but without its full exultation. It is the irrepressible joy of the Church, even amid all her grief, in the possession of that great and unspeakable Gift around which all her love and worship centre. But the lights are hardly out on the altar than she falls back into the gloom from which, for a moment, the institution of the Eucharist had called her. The sanctuary is bare; the lamp is extinguished; the Presence gone from the altar, and the Church falls down stricken and amazed before the naked crucifix in all the desolation of Good Friday.

Another pause, and then what a change! It draws towards the dawn of Easter. The Paschal moon burns in the heavens above the fragrant garden and the new tomb. The first notes of the birds flutter upon the soft stirring airs of the morning, and lo! the angels are there, and the tomb is empty. Heaven and earth catch the joyful news, “The Lord is risen,” and from the ransomed Church goes up one burst of praise— Alleluia! Alleluia! Surrexit Dominus vere,’ Alleluia!

The great Forty Days go their way, with glimpses of the Risen Lord, until at the Ascension He is parted

1 *¢ The Lord is risen indeed.”

The Liturgial Year II from our sight. The Fire that He came to cast upon earth falls in flaming tongues at Pentecost, and the Church goes forth to her work endued with a mighty Power from on high.

In the adorations of the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity the Church sums up her faith in the Triune Majesty of God, and then on the Thursday following calls forth, as it were, from out of the very bosom of that impenetrable mystery, the abiding Presence of the Incarnate God in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. On this Feast of Corpus Christi, Eternal Truth fulfils the parting promise, “I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you.” “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

Then come the long weeks after Trinity, when the saints pass one by one across the pathway, and take their places among the great multitude of the redeemed, who stand before the Throne of God in the Church Triumphant. They are “clothed with white robes,” lifting up holy hands to succour and defend the Church on earth.

And so the months glide away into the past; year follows year; each one as it runs its course repeating to the children of the Church the same gracious story of the Master, “till He come.”

It has been well said that this Liturgical Year is like a golden crown, studded with crystals and precious stones, that the Church has substituted for the crown of thorns with which the Jewish Church surrounded the head of

12 Introduction the Saviour, “data est et corona, et exivit vincens ut vinceret” —“a crown was given unto Him; and He went forth conquering and to conquer.”!

In the Liturgical Year the Church seems to stamp upon the fleeting course of time, as it rolls on into eternity, the very impress of the life of her Lord.

She offers this work to Him in reparation for the three-and-thirty years on earth, when men rejected Him and put Him to death. And He, the glorified Christ, accepts the gift of His Church. He puts forth His hand, still scarred, to take the crown she offers. And as He takes it, the dew of His blessing falls from His Throne above, and blesses the year thus consecrated to His service. ‘Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness.”? Thou encirclest with Thine own life the fleeting years that make the lives of men.

The Liturgical Year is, then, the school in which God teaches His children. He places before them Jesus Christ, Who is “the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His Person,’® in order that He may be the pattern and example after which His children may learn to fashion their own life. This is the “purpose of God in Christ Jesus.” “Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren.”

It might be thought that in the continual repetition

1 Rev. vi. 2. #7 Ps. dxvenias “Hebi 3. * Rom. viii. 29,

Lhe Liturgical Year 3 year after year of the mysteries of our Lord’s life there would be some loss of freshness, some sense of weariness. It is, however, the experience of all who follow the Liturgical Year with anything like earnestness, that the recurrence of the Festivals does not in the least diminish their charm. On the contrary, the longer we live the more inexhaustible the Gospel mysteries seem to become; the more fragrant, and the more full of grace. This is the work of God the Holy Ghost, Who desires that our life should go from strength to strength by the continual finding of new light and fresh vigour in the contemplation and following of the life of Christ. We find year by year as a Festival comes round that it brings a twofold grace—the increase of the knowledge of the truths of the faith once delivered to the saints, and an increase also of our own spiritual growth.

The cycle of the Liturgical Year presents to our mind and heart every doctrine of the Church in its suitable place and order. We are thus enabled literally to build up ourselves in our most holy faith.

There is another result—most precious—from the keeping of the seasons of the Church, and that is, srowth in the knowledge and value of the written Word of God, the Holy Scriptures.

We cannot go through the Liturgical Year without finding ourselves daily in contact with these Divine Scriptures. The Offices of the Church are almost entirely constructed from the material supplied in the Old and New Testaments.

14 Introduction

The Psalter is the foundation upon which the Church has built up her Choir Office—her Matins, her Evensong, and the Lesser Hours. All the wealth of the Prophets, all the treasury of the Apostolic Epistles has been lavished upon this great work of the Canonical Hours.

But it is at the Altar of the Eucharist that the actual text of the Holy Gospels is proclaimed with every mark of worship and of love. There the hallowed pages live again, and shine more brightly than the lights which tell of the speedy advent of the Light of the World.

There, in the Eucharistic Presence of the Incarnate Word, the Altar Office draws up into itself the worship of the Choir services, and floods them with light and fills them with grace. The Altar is the shore of the eternal world ; Jesus Christ stands on that shore when the morning breaks—stands there (as of old by the Lake of Tiberias) to illuminate the reason, strengthen the will, draw out the love, and deepen the worship of His Church in the moment when He forces upon her the conviction of His Presence, and constrains her to cry out, “It is the Lord!”}

It is for this reason that the Choir Office is always linked at least by the Collect to the Office of the Altar.

In entering, therefore, into the spirit of the Church and of the Liturgical Year, we shall necessarily grow in our knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. In the i St. John xxi, ¥.

The Liturgiual Year 15 inspired writings of the Old Testament we have the record of the immediate preparation of the world for the first Advent of Jesus Christ. In the Holy Gospels we have the record of the Saviour’s life and death, of His rising’ again, and of His wonderful Ascension. In the Acts of the Apostles we have the first pages of the history of the Catholic Church, the story of the giving of the Holy Ghost for His temporal mission, and the acts of the first Martyrs, Apostles, and Confessors of Christ. In the Epistles we have letters inspired by God to aid not only the first converts of the Jewish and Gentile worlds, but to instruct for all time the faithful who are called of God into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ.

The Liturgical Year is thus the means ordained by God, through the instrumentality of His Church, to make known Jesus Christ, who in His turn makes known the Father and all His infinite love for His children.

And yet have we not each of us much to learn? Are we not, perhaps, still like St. Philip, saying, “Shew us the Father,” forgetful that the Father can only be known through the Son, Who is His visible “express image”? “Philip saith unto Him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father !”?!

} St.John xiv. 8,9.

Liturgical Notes for Adbent

The Western Church (Roman and Anglican) reads the greater part of the book of /sazahk during Advent.

The Anglican lectionary provides for the reading of part of the Revelation of St. John during Advent and Christmastide.

OFFICE HymMwns.

‘*O Heavenly Word, Eternal Light.”—A. and M., 46. Lauds. Vox clara ecce intonat.

‘* Hark ! a thrilling voice is sounding.” —A. and MZ, 47. Vespers. Conditor alme siderum.

‘* Creator of the starry height.” —4. and MZ, 45.

The hymn Dies tre, ‘ Day of wrath! O Day of mourning !” (A. and M., 398), and ‘‘ The Litany of the Four Last Things ” (A. and M., 463) are also very generally used at this time.

EE FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT

The Hodvent Spirit

VoL 1.—C

Prophecy “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come.” (Isa. xxi. 11, 12.)

Seaus Christ

“Blessed is he that watcheth.” (Rev. xvi. 15.)

Gbhe Soul

“My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.” (RSaCXXX cg)

Le

The Hovent Spirit

**T am watching quietly

Every day :

Whenever the sun shines brightly I rise and say—

Sunlight is the shining of His face !

And look unto the gates of His high place Beyond the sea,

For I know He is coming shortly To summon me.”

HERE are probably but few persons who have not

at one time or another watched the day break. Perhaps we ourselves have looked out over the sea when “darkness was upon the face of the deep.” We have heard the dull splash of the waves as they ebb and flow in their ceaseless motion, but we have not seen anything, for the darkness which is darkest before the dawn has hidden everything from our sight. Gradually, almost without our being aware of it, the darkness becomes less deep, and slowly the first streaks of dawn creep up the sky. At first all is indistinct and shadowy. We can see but the merest outline of that which is about us. We watch; it grows lighter and lighter, until in the grey cold of the early morning we see the waters stretching out far before us. The mist clears off, the shadows flee away, and in a little while the sun arises and kindles to warmth and fresh beauty the waters that but a moment before were so cheerless and so cold. The night is over and gone, the morning has come. “ Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh.”

It is a very familiar thought that there is a similarity between the order of nature and the order of grace, between the natural world and the spiritual life of man.

The Church does not hurry us without notice into the keeping of her greater Festivals. She has her dawn before her brightest days. Such are Advent and Lent; such are the vigils, fasts, and days of abstinence. The children of the Church to whom these seasons and times are realities know something of the joy which follows the observance of these days of preparation. The day has but seemed the brighter because of its contrast to the night of penitence by which it was ushered in. Still, it was to the morning that we looked. The vigil and the fast end in the Festival; the night passes into day—‘“ Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh.”

And life itself, what is its purpose? Is it not at least like the dawn in this, that life is a time of preparation for the “day of the Lord”?!

Early in the morning we see a light in the cottage

AbrGor,: vrs:

Lhe Advent Spirit 21 window, and we know that the workman is making himself ready for the day’s toil.

“Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening.”! The shadows lengthen ; the toil of day, the weary work of life is over. It is only “ until the evening” that man must labour; then he lays him down to rest. What shall we write on the cross that marks the Christian grave? What better than the old words of God’s Book, “ Until the day break and the shadows flee away”?

“Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh.”

bE

Advent is a time of preparation—by works of penance—for the Birth of our Saviour; this is its immediate purpose. But just as in the prophecies of Holy Scripture that speak of the coming of our Lord to save mankind, there is often a reference also to His second coming to judge the world, so too in the teaching of the Church during Advent there is a threefold coming of our Lord continually brought before us; His coming to save, His coming by grace to the individual soul, and His coming at the end of time to be our Judge.

Advent as a definite ecclesiastical season of the Church dates back at least to the fifth century, when we find it was usual to give the people special inay: First Sunday in Advent structions in order to prepare for the Christmas Festival. Perhaps the oldest reference which names the length of the Advent season is to be found in the second book of the Hzstory of the Franks by St. Gregory of Tours, where we are told that about the year 480 St. Perpetuus decreed a fast three times a week from Martinmas to Christmas. In the Greek Church the Fast of Advent is kept during forty days, beginning with the 14th of November—the Greek Festival of St. Philip. In the Anglican and Roman Communions Advent Sunday is always the nearest Sunday to the Feast of St. Andrew, whether before or after.1 Advent is therefore a season observed by the whole Catholic Church of Christ. We have now to consider its spirit, and the way in which we may put the spirit of the Church at this time into practice.

The coming of our Lord is threefold—in three different ways at three different times. St. Bernard writes: “In the first coming, He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and in power; in the third, He comes in glory and in majesty ; the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.”

Peter of Blois, in his sermon de Adventu, says: “There are three comings of Christ; the first in the flesh, the second in the soul, the third at the judgment. The first was at midnight, according to the words of the Gospel, ‘At midnight there was a cry made, Behold

Book of Common Prayer,

—

Lhe Advent Spirit 28 the Bridegroom cometh!’ But this first coming is long since past, for Christ has been seen on earth, and has conversed with men. We are now in the second coming, provided only we are such as that He may thus come to us; for He has said that if we love Him, He will come and make His abode with us.! So this coming is full of uncertainty to us, for who, save the Spirit of God, knoweth them that are of God? They who are raised out of themselves by the desire of heavenly things know indeed when He comes, but whence He cometh, or whither He goeth, they know not.2, As for the third coming, it is most certain that it will take place, most uncertain when it will take place.... The first coming was humble and hidden, the second is mysterious and full of love, the third will be majestic and terrible. In His first coming, Christ was judged by men unjustly; in His second, He renders us just by His grace; in His third, He will judge all . things with justice. In His first, a Lamb; in His last, a Lion; in the one between the two, the tenderest of Friends.” . .

“Watchman, what of the night?” The Church puts to each of us in Advent some such question as this. She thinks of the long time when “the people that sat in darkness” 4 waited for the coming of the Light of the world—the Sun of Righteousness. What of that night? It was not a wasted time; it was a time

1 St. John xiv. 23. 2’ St. John iii. 8. 3 De Adventu, iii. Si isatxhingeeots Matt, iv,.16.

when God was preparing the Gentile and the Jew to enter into the courts of the Temple of Christ.

It is not good that we should forget the state of the world before the first coming of the Saviour. The Scriptures of the Old Testament will tell us of the comparative darkness in which even the Israel of God lived. They feared rather than loved God; they had no certain knowledge of life beyond the grave, although the future resurrection of the body was not an unknown hope; they were excluded from heaven, which had been closed by the fall of man, so that a rest in Abraham’s bosom was their hope rather than the vision of God. And yet those men of old desired to see the day of the Son of Man; they strained their eyes to catch a glimpse of the Redeemer ;! they watched for His coming as eagerly as they who toss in sleepless unrest watch for the morning.