ST JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, VICTORIA
  • Home
  • About
    • Safe Environment
  • Worship
    • Holy Baptism
    • Confirmation
  • Ordinariate
  • Music
  • OLW
  • Blog

A Dying Life

30/3/2020

0 Comments

 
Fr Kenyon
The framer called to say that the print was ready for collection, and so off into the strong winds of Vancouver Island it was. There is no lockdown here (yet), and so long as folk observe the requisite social distance and keep to under 50 then British Columbians are free to move around and pick up their much-anticipated framed prints. I began to collect these 1970s Church Literature Association reproductions of the works of the artist Martin Travers (background here, especially in the comments) after an initial benefaction by Mgr W. This copy comes via Glastonbury and, appropriately, has made its home on the wall on this Monday of Passion Week, thus lending itself to an excerpt from Mgr Ronald Knox’s sermons on the Cross, preached four years after the creation of the original Travers image. Hard to beat the heady fusion 1920s Catholic art and homiletics...
 
‘In the words of the Imitation of Christ, we have to live a dying life. A life from which the thought of our death-bed is never wholly absent, giving us a contempt of worldly things, giving us a sense of urgency and haste, because our time is so short. “Ye are dead” (St Paul tells us), “and your life is hidden with Christ in God”. As the children of Israel passed to their deliverance through the dark waters of the Red Sea, so Christ, our Leader, delivered us by passing, on Good Friday, through the dark gates of the tomb. In baptism, we have all mystically achieved that ordeal by water, we have all been mystically identified with Christ’s death – buried with him (St Paul says again) in baptism. “As dying, and behold we live”; it is only in proportion as we are dead to the world that we live to him.
 
As Christ upon the Cross in death reclined,
Into his Father’s arms his parting soul resigned,
So now herself my soul would freely give
Into his sacred charge to whom all spirits live;
So now beneath his eye would calmly rest
Without a wish or thought abiding in the breast;
Save that his Will be done, what e’er bedite,
Dead to herself, and dead in him to all beside’.

Mgr Ronald Knox, 1888-1957
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Fr Lee Kenyon

    Fr Lee Kenyon

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018

    Categories

    All
    Advent
    Andrew SDC
    Anglican
    Ascension
    Baptism
    Benedict XVI
    Bible
    Christmas
    Church
    Collect
    Discipleship
    Easter
    Ecumenism
    Epiphany
    Eucharist
    Faithful Departed
    Five Wounds
    Guéranger
    Holy Family
    Holy Name
    Holy Spirit
    Holy Week
    Hymnody
    John Paul II
    Knox
    Lent
    Liturgy
    Love
    Monarchy
    Music
    Nativity
    Newman
    Ordinariate
    Our Lady
    Parsch
    Passiontide
    Penance
    Pentecost
    Pilgrimage
    Poetry
    Prayer
    Precious Blood
    Pre-Lent
    Priesthood
    Resurrection
    Rogation
    Sacred Heart
    Saints
    Transfiguration
    Trinity
    Unity

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
    • Safe Environment
  • Worship
    • Holy Baptism
    • Confirmation
  • Ordinariate
  • Music
  • OLW
  • Blog