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

Diversity of Gifts

19/5/2020

0 Comments

 
Fr Kenyon
St Dunstan, 12th century, British Library (Royal MS 10 A XIII/1)
‘Dunstan… at an early age co-ordinated his many gifts and activities into a single channel, that of the direct service of God in England. There are even now many ways in which we, a thousand years later, are influenced by his creative mind and his practical genius. You may like to hear the church bells across the fields on a summer day or from the cathedral tower on a winter’s night: Dunstan ruled that all monasteries were to use the English custom of ringing bells, especially prolonging them on festivals, and it appears that all the great national functions graced by the King, his Court and the prelates were marked by much bell-ringing; and he himself, with his great collaborator, Bishop Ethelwold, cast two bells for Abingdon monastery. You may like to hear a lunch-hour organ recital: organs were probably known earlier, but they had ceased to be made in the ninth century; Dunstan and Ethelwold re-introduced and popularised them, taking a personal hand in their actual construction. One of the parts of a Gregorian setting of the Mass which is still sung, the Kyrie ‘Rex Splendens’, is the composition of Dunstan; the daily prayers for the royal family in the Prayer-book services go back to the ruling of Archbishop Dunstan; and if you ever slip into vulgar slang and refer to a person as having ‘been taken down a peg or two’, you may (says one tradition) all unconsciously be paying tribute to Dunstan, who, finding that dangerous quarrels in taverns often arose because customers drank more than their share or less than their boast, ordered that ale-pots should be fitted with metal pegs, which would show the level of the liquor and the fair share of each drinker. He has been called a dreamer of dreams and a visionary; if so, that condition made no difference to his practical commonsense and his vigorous power of furthering reforms. He is a man of such diversity of gifts and richness of character, possessing that super-abundance of vitality and energy which is not infrequently married to great abilities’.

Sibyl Harton, 1898-1993

We beseech thee, O Lord, graciously to hear the prayers which we offer unto thee on this festival of thy Bishops Dunstan, Ethelwold, and Oswald: that like as they were found worthy to do thee faithful service in reforming and governing thy Church; so, by their example, we too may have a singular zeal for upholding thy household; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. – Divine Worship: The Missal.
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