A wonderful celebration of Confirmation and First Holy Communion at St John Henry’s on Sunday. Mgr Peter Wilkinson conferred the Sacrament of Confirmation, as delegated by Bishop Lopes, and I was privileged to be able to give the children their First Communion. Given the difficulties of this year it was a great blessing to be able to spend time teaching and preparing the children for the Sacraments. Share in the hope, optimism, and joy of their growing faith has been a great and humbling privilege, as well as a deep source of encouragement.

‘Dearly beloved, by Holy Baptism, God our Father gave these his adopted sons and daughters new birth to eternal life. Let us therefore pray him to pour out upon them the Holy Ghost, to strengthen them in their faith, and to anoint them that they may be more like Christ the Son of God: that they may continue his forever, and daily increase in the Holy Ghost, more and more, until they come unto God’s everlasting kingdom.
 
Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hast brought these thy servants to new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, freeing them from sin: send upon them, O Lord, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete; give them the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety; fill them with the spirit of the fear of the Lord. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen’.

Divine Worship: Occasional Services

‘This is a prayer with a double petition, for the Church and for our salvation. The juxtaposition of the two is not accidental but arises out of a logical necessity. We cannot think adequately of salvation without calling to mind the Church, for in any case we cannot be saved alone and the Church is the instrument of salvation.
 
…The Church is often described as the ark of salvation, not meaning that membership of it is a mechanical guarantee of ultimate heaven, but that, as St Cyprian said seventeen centuries ago, outside it there is really no safety. We pray that God will “keep” it, knowing that so long as the vessel remains unharmed there is always the chance that the passengers, one and all, may arrive safe at their journey’s end.
 
There is always, however, the chance of accident to the individual passenger, and so we repeat the word “keep” asking that not only the Church as a whole be kept in God’s perpetual mercy, but also that each several soul may be kept from all things hurtful and led to all things profitable for its salvation.
 
Salvation is thus a double process: negatively it is a rescue from every possibility of harm, and positively it is an introduction to all that is good. By derivation the word implies perfect health. Theologically it includes not only the well-being of the individual but also of his environment, and finally the ultimate bliss of heaven’.

from Reflections on the Collects, 1964
​by William Wand KCVO, 1885-1977 (Bishop of London 1945-1955)

‘The Strange Case of the Elusive Patrimony started when Anglo-Catholicism lost its distinctive identity in the 1960s and 70s. I’m not sure about other countries but in [England] it certainly lost it. From the 1960s onwards, a great multitude of Anglo-Catholics, a great multitude which no man could number, all rushed forward like so many lemmings, in imitation of something they then called ‘modern Rome’. The lemmings rushed forward and then toppled headlong over the cliffs of de-sacralisation and secularisation, most of all in worship. If only Anglo-Catholics had kept their nerve when so many others were going mental. If only Anglo-Catholics had made greater efforts to preserve that exquisite treasury of faith and worship which we know as The English Missal.
 
The finest patrimony of Anglicanism is the treasure-trove of traditional Anglo-Catholic worship. The precious core of that treasure was forged when The English Missal came to birth in 1912. It then evolved, getting better and better with each subsequent edition. Its use of Sarum and Tridentine liturgical texts in Cranmerian English fired and sustained the Anglo-Catholic movement with remarkable success. The English Missal was the bedrock of those edifying decades when, in the words of Sir John Betjeman, the faith was taught, and fanned to a golden blaze. Then came the hasty reforms of the late 1960s and 1970s. The reformers piped and the lemmings jumped. But let us be fair. It wasn’t just Anglican lemmings who jumped. Roman lemmings also jumped. On both sides of the Tiber far too few had the courage or the honesty to question the glaring discontinuity and to ask: how on earth does this new tune harmonise with what we always heard before?
 
God is very good and mercifully brings order out of confusion. One particularly bright shaft of light has now emerged to lighten our darkness. That light is the publication of Divine Worship: The Missal. This Missal is a magnificent piece of work. It preserves a large portion of that traditional Anglo-Catholic patrimony which has so much to offer the modern Church in the modern world’.

from an address, ‘Blessed John Henry Newman: Our Guide for Tomorrow’, 15 October 2018, by Fr Ignatius Harrison, Cong. Orat. The full article can be read here.

‘The Ordinariate is a precious gift from Pope Benedict XVI to the entire Church. It is first and foremost an act of genuine ecumenism. It allows former Anglicans to bring important parts of their great treasury of music, liturgy and spirituality with them into the Catholic Church. Now, when Anglicans enter the Catholic Church, they have generously been given the means to maintain important parts of their patrimony and so feel fully at home. The beauty of Anglican liturgies will also strengthen the Catholic Church and the unity it provides will strengthen Christianity’.

The Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP

‘Father Paul Wattson, founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, had a long and deep devotion to Mary, Mother of Christ. Even before he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, Fr Paul and Society of Atonement co-founder, Mother Lurana White, established the Rosary League of Our Lady of the Atonement. In 1903, he enclosed a pamphlet in the first issue of his publication, The Lamp, encouraging devotion to Our Lady by praying the Rosary.
 
Later, this devotion led Father Paul to give the title “Our Lady of the Atonement” to the Blessed Mother. He felt that the Society of Atonement’s goal to re-unify Christians could not be accomplished without the help of prayer and the intercession of Our Lady. He wrote an editorial in The Lamp in March of 1910, “God forbid that the Children of the Atonement should ever be strangers to the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ”. He adds, “The very name Atonement is a perpetual reminder of the Cross. Our Lord hanging there in mortal agony; Our Lady standing by, the sword, foretold by Simeon, piercing her heart. This is the central scene in the mystery of the Atonement.” Fr Paul believed that her claim to this high title rests most solidly on the fact that she consented to become the Mother of the Redeemer and that she suffered with Jesus during the Passion. In the September 1932 issue of The Lamp, Father Paul wrote, “When we, therefore, give to our Blessed Mother the title of ‘Our Lady of the Atonement’, we mean ‘Our Lady of Unity.’”
 
In 1919, Pope Benedict XV granted Father Paul’s fervent appeal to bless the Atonement community by recognising the Graymoor custom titling the Mother of Christ as Our Lady of the Atonement, and she was given a feast day of July 9. Father Paul composed a prayer to Our Lady of the Atonement which continues to be prayed by the Friars and Sisters of the Atonement today’.

from the Father Paul of Graymoor Guild

O God, who dost gather together those that have been scattered, and who dost preserve those that have been gathered: we beseech thee, through the intercession of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Atonement; that thou wouldest pour out upon thy Church the grace of unity and send thy Holy Ghost upon all mankind, that they may be one; 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.

Scenes of Easter (Vigil and Day) at home in the Oratory. I share an excerpt from my Easter Day note to parishioners.

‘It can be tempting, especially in our moments of loneliness or isolation, to despair at the loss of control and freedom we’re all experiencing. It can be tempting, in the absence of our familiar routines and patterns of the spiritual life, to regard the Lent and Holy Week we’ve been through, and the Easter we’ve now entered, at best as ‘less’ than that to which we’re usually accustomed, and at worst as somehow ‘wasted’. Some of this is understandable, and I am as frustrated and bewildered as you, but we have to hold to the hope that the Resurrection offers to us, both now, and for the future.
 
If the liturgies of Holy Week celebrated mutedly in isolation have impressed anything upon me, it’s that the whole of the Christian life – our real life – is lived with and through the ever-present reality of the Cross, that contradictory symbol at the heart of our Catholic Faith. Holy Week, with its great narratives of death to life, darkness to light, and of faith, hope, and love lost and then restored by means of that Cross, signify that this Week isn’t some mere preparatory re-enactment of biblical events in the run-up to the Resurrection story. Holy Week isn’t just for Holy Week. It’s for the rest of our lives: the ultimate spiritual, liturgical, psychological, and mystical context for each and every one of us in our journey on the path to Heaven.
 
In this present time of plague, as with other times in our lives, when darkness seeks to overcome light; when death and suffering seem to have the last word, Holy Week offers us the key to understanding what’s really going on. God enters most fully into all the pain and misery of what it is to be man and he redeems it. He bows low in order to lift us up and draw us more closely, more intimately, unto himself. If we live the whole of our lives as we’ve lived this Holy Week then we’ll have a better sense of what hope is all about. Isolation, separation, darkness, despair, loss, and death have all, ultimately, been defeated. But these, for now, form the context and the content of our life, and perhaps our experiencing them this year in a more personal way  has helped us to see that they are but a necessary part of the struggle; a struggle we must undergo – a cross we must all bear – in order to be brought unto the glory of the Resurrection’.

Always the same hills
Crown the horizon,
Remote witnesses
Of the still scene.
​
And in the foreground
The tall Cross,
Sombre, untenanted,
Aches for the Body
That is back in the cradle
Of a maid’s arms.

Today’s historic Rededication of England as the Dowry of Mary – centred naturally on the Image of Our Lady of Walsingham, the premier Marian shrine in that realm - brought to mind memories of many happy and peaceful pilgrim visits to Our Lady’s sanctuary there. Walsingham has long held a special place in my devotional and spiritual life; a place that offers safe harbour, protection, respite from the busyness of the world, and the sense of home beyond home. Entering into the Holy House – which remains the first pilgrim port of call in the village for those of us in the Ordinariate, as it did in our Anglican days – is an act to be accompanied by deep sigh of relief. Words from the 43rd Psalm, fittingly part of the Introit for today’s Mass for Passion Sunday, mark every pilgrim’s First Visit – ‘I will go into the house of the Lord, even the house of my joy and gladness’ – echoing and underlying that sense of homecoming and also of the joy – Mary’s joy – in the mystery of the Incarnation, to which Walsingham bears witness.
 
A fourth Canadian pilgrimage was planned for the spring of next year but, as with much else, that has had to be put on hold until a clearer path can be discerned in the wake of evolving circumstances due to the global pandemic. So for now, and for a little while longer, as with the Eucharistic fast, may we be content with and comforted by many spiritual visits to Walsingham, pledging our love and devotion to Our Blessed Lady, under that ancient title, and pleading to her for the conversion of England (and wherever else we may live), the restoration of the sick, consolation for the afflicted, and peace for the departed.
 
Here is Fr Alfred Hope Patten’s (Anglican) prayer ‘to Our Lady of Walsingham When Absent’, from an old copy of the Walsingham Pilgrim Manual.
 
Most holy Virgin! I prostrate myself in spirit before thy Shrine at Walsingham, that Sanctuary favoured by thy visits, favours and many miracles. I unite myself with all those who have ever sought thee, and do now seek thee, in that holy place, and join my prayers with theirs. But especially I unite my intentions with the intentions of the Priests who offer the holy sacrifice upon thy Altar there. I offer thee my love and devotion, asking thee to remember for all eternity that I am numbered among the pilgrims who have sought thy intercession in the Sanctuary of thy choice. I renew the promises and intentions I made when it was my privilege to salute thee at thy Shrine in the Vale of the Stiffkey. Dear Mother, Our Lady of Walsingham, remember me.

First Evensong of Lady Day has been said and tea and cake enjoyed to celebrate, in more muted a manner than usual, the Solemnity of the Annunciation. Our Lady of Walsingham, enthroned just to the left of where I say my Office, has been a great comfort in these days, especially as we’ve worked through the novena to her in preparation for Sunday’s rededication of England as her dowry. One of the prayers in the second form of the novena, as provided in the Ordinariate’s rather excellent St Gregory Prayer Book, addresses Our Lady with these words, ‘Our Lady of Walsingham, we commend to thy loving intercession our parish, its priests, deacons, and people. Guard us beneath thy loving protection from sin and sorrow, shield us against pride and envy, and all the snares of the devil; and teach us, loving thee, to love the Lord Jesus, and all souls for his sake’. Loving protection is absolutely what we all need at the moment, and Our Lady doesn’t disappoint in offering her loving maternal consolations and protection, especially in moments of great anxiety and distress.

Which is a nice segue to an e-mail received from my colleague Mgr Wilkinson this morning. He says that ‘one way we can keep our people focused on the season is through [the St Gregory Prayer Book]. There is of course a whole section on Lent and on Passiontide, and on Our Lady. People don’t know... what to say... this book would help them’. And he’s right. The book has proved indispensable on a number of liturgical and pastoral occasions; a treasury of our Anglican patrimony, user-friendly and full of gems not easily found elsewhere. I heartily recommend it, and even have a lead on a much-reduced offer. Contact me for details!

​Lord, teach us how to pray aright
With rev’rence and with fear;
Though dust and ashes in thy sight,
We may, we must draw near.
 
We perish if we cease from prayer;
O grant us power to pray.
And when to meet thee we prepare,
Lord, meet us by the way.

James Montgomery, 1771-1854

A busy week or so since Sexagesima, hence the lack of posts. My wife gave birth to our sixth child, a son, earlier this month, and yesterday, on the Solemnity of the Chair of Saint Peter, our Feast of Title in this Ordinariate (which displaced the pre-Lenten Quinquagesima Sunday), I had the great honour of baptising him within our Sunday Mass. The music was glorious, but it was a special delight to hear Palestrina's Sicut cervus sung as we processed back to the high altar to resume the Mass. A joyfully patrimonial feast followed in the hall.

Today marks the third anniversary of the death of one of our Parochial Vicars here at St John Henry’s, Victoria, Fr Michael Birch. Fr Michael was my predecessor as Rector of St John the Evangelist, Calgary (1974-1984), and he did much to build up the Catholic tradition in the parish, laying the foundations for its future entry into the Catholic Church in 2011. The top left-hand photo shows Fr Michael with the then-Anglican Bishop of Calgary, Morse Goodman. Fr Michael was received into the Catholic Church in 2012 and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood, for the Ordinariate, at St Andrew’s Cathedral, Victoria, in 2013. I had the honour of preaching at his First Mass, and the sad privilege of preaching at his Funeral Requiem Mass in the same cathedral in 2016. May he rest in peace, and rise in glory. Jesu, mercy. Mary, pray.

​O God, who didst cause thy servant Michael, for whom we pray, to enjoy the office of Priest after the order of thine Apostles: grant unto him, we beseech thee; finally to rejoice in the company of those thy Saints in heaven whose ministry he did sometime share on earth; 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.

Some photos of today’s Solemn Mass of Requiem, which began with an Act of Remembrance and concluded with the Absolution of the Dead at the Catafalque. The setting of the Mass was the Missa pro defunctis, in Latin, and we sang ‘O God our help in ages past’, ‘I vow to thee my country’, and ‘O valiant hearts’, as well as a verse each of the National (‘O Canada’) and Royal (‘God save the Queen’) Anthems. The Offertory motet was Richard Farrant’s ‘Call to Remembrance’. The Dies irae was sung in English, according to Burgess’ plainsong setting, and the Libera Me was sung in Latin. We were very grateful to have a bugler from the 5th (British Columbia) Field Artillery Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery to play the Last Post and the Rouse for our Act of Remembrance. A very observance of Remembrance Sunday. The national celebration, tomorrow, of Remembrance Day will be kept with a Requiem Mass at 9.30 a.m.

O Lord our God, whose Name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: we thank thee for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; grant us, we beseech thee, that having them always in remembrance we may imitate their faithfulness and sacrifice; 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.

A joyful day yesterday as we kept, as a parish family, today’s anniversary of the promulgation in 2009 of Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus. By the direction of our bishop all parishes and parochial communities in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, with the gift of an indulgence attached, offered a Votive Mass of the Holy Ghost in thanksgiving for this occasion, concluding with a Solemn Te Deum. We were blessed to hear Hassler’s Missa Secunda for the Kyrie, Sanctus-Benedictus, and Agnus Dei, and an English setting of the Missa de Angelis for the Gloria and Credo. We also heard Palestrina’s Super flumina Babylonis, appointed for the Offertory for Trinity XX, and Attwood’s sublime Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire as our Communion motet. The Anglican patrimony was well represented with Come down, O Love divine for our opening hymn, Come, thou Holy Spirit, come for the Offertory, and O thou who camest from above​ as our final hymn. The Te Deum, sung in English following the Postcommunion Prayer, was according to the Ambrosian melody. An inspiring liturgical and musical offering to the glory of God, meaningful fellowship, and much hope for the future of the Ordinariate here in Victoria. We give thanks to God, and to Pope Benedict, for this great gift of communion now bearing fruit in our portion of the vineyard.

Almighty and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth: mercifully hear our prayers, and grant to this Ordinariate all things needful for its spiritual welfare (priests and deacons to labour in this portion of thy vineyard; holy, learned, and zealous religious; churches complete in the beauty of holiness). Strengthen and confirm the faithful; protect and guide the children; visit and relieve the sick; turn and soften the wicked; arouse the careless; recover the fallen; restore the penitent. Remove all hindrances to the advancement of thy truth; and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within the fold of thy holy Church, to the honour and glory of thy blessed Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. - St Gregory’s Prayer Book.

‘Divine Worship is more than a collection of liturgical texts and ritual gestures. It is the organic expression of the Church’s own lex orandi as it was taken up and developed in an Anglican context over the course of nearly five-hundred years of ecclesial separation, and is now reintegrated into Catholic worship as the authoritative expression of a noble patrimony to be shared with the whole Church. As such, it is to be understood as a distinct form of the Roman Rite.
 
…Understanding what patrimony is and how it “works” is a necessary first step before we are able to articulate something more about the liturgical expression of that patrimony. From the outset, the Constitution itself articulates the necessity of the approval by the Holy See for any liturgical provision. This fact itself indicates that the Church is the ultimate arbiter of what is or is not to be considered patrimony. Let’s call this the first key to unlocking the concept of patrimony. It is not what you or I, or this scholar or that community says it is, but involves discernment by the Church, which is then confirmed by the exercise of ecclesiastical authority.
 
In this age in which liturgical matters are more likely to be debated on blogs rather than in scholarly journals, the judgement of legitimate ecclesiastical authority becomes increasingly important. Indeed, the very affirmation that there is such a thing as an Anglican liturgical and spiritual patrimony, which enriches the whole Church as “a treasure to be shared” enters the Catholic lexicon in 1970. On October 25 of that year, Pope Paul VI canonised forty English and Welsh martyrs. In his homily, the Holy Father praised “the legitimate prestige and worthy patrimony of piety and usage proper to the Anglican” Communion, words that were viewed both as a crucial validation of the special relationship between Catholics and Anglicans and as a confirmation of the existence of an Anglican patrimony worthy of preservation. By his authority, Pope Paul articulated a principle: for whatever other ecclesial deficits resulting from the lack of full communion between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, the Catholic Church acknowledges the work of the Holy Spirit in this body of separated brothers and sisters so as to be able to say that the manner in which the faith was nourished, proclaimed, and celebrated in the Anglican Communion these past 500 years adds to the vitality of the Church and enriches the body Catholic. In Anglicanorum coetibus, we see Pope Paul’s insight framed in Pope Benedict’s concern “to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church” not only “as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate,” but also importantly “as a treasure to be shared.”’

from the Hildebrand Lecture ‘The Worship of God in the Beauty of Holiness’, 21 June 2017
by Bishop Steven Lopes

‘Prayer is the effort we make to take advantage of the open-handedness of God. If the open ear and the open hand belong to God, the open mind must belong to us. We need to learn what kind of gifts we should ask for, and what sort of petition is better left unsaid. Therefore we must have a mind ready to receive instruction so that we can learn what things are most pleasing to him.
 
Solomon won his way to God’s heart by abstaining from any selfish petition and asking only that he might have the wisdom necessary for the good ordering of God’s people. We who belong to the Christian Church and have the revelation of Christ behind us are in still better case, for we can judge God’s character so much more easily and accurately through knowing Christ. “Let this mind be in you”, says St Paul, “which was also in Christ Jesus”.
 
If we must possess the mind of Christ, what is foreign to him will be impossible for us. We shall instinctively reject what is bad and cultivate what is good. We shall be guided to understand better our own needs, and so to ask for the things that are really worthwhile. We shall not be afraid to ask in the name, that is, in the person of Jesus. We shall know that what is important is not the manner of asking but the thing asked for. We shall have special confidence in our petition being answered because we shall be saying the right prayer, and shall thus be observing the protocol of heaven’. 

from Reflections on the Collects, 1964
​by William Wand KCVO, 1885-1977 (Bishop of London 1945-1955)

‘This is a powerful petition in which we ask God to conform us, both internally and externally, to his righteousness (to what is rightful). Further, there is the honest admission that, in and of ourselves, that is in our wisdom and strength, we cannot please God by seeking to live what we consider to be the righteous and good life. (Note that this Collect is true to the meaning of the original Latin prayer, which is so terse that a literal translation of the second part would be, “that we, who cannot even exist without thee, may have strength to live according to thee”.)
 
Today we learn from our society and in our education and culture that each of us is an autonomous being. That is, I am in charge of my life and destiny and so are you! We think of the human being as being the centre of the universe and if we think of God at all in relation to the world it is as an Extra.
 
In contrast, genuine Christian thinking sees a person in total dependence upon God for his creation, his existence, his sustenance, his salvation and his eternal destiny. Whatever measure of free will and free determination a person possesses is itself from God and is only beneficial if conformed to the known will of God.
 
True freedom is not known in the exercise of personal autonomy and pursuing one’s own selfish will, but rather in thinking according to God’s ways and purposes and in doing his will, assisted and guided by his revelation and his Spirit. That is, the genuine life of righteousness and goodness is following the Way of Jesus Christ as his Spirit indwells the heart and mind and directs the will.
 
This Collect helps us to move from the mindset and spirit of the fallen world and evil age into the mindset and spirit of the kingdom of heaven and of God’s righteousness. And it presupposes that we are diligent readers of the sacred Scriptures where the mind and will of God is revealed to the Church’.
 
Peter Toon, 1939-2009

‘The Collect, Epistle and Gospel [in the Prayer Book] still follow the old English order of the Sarum Missal and are of ancient origin.
 
We admit that God’s providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth. Some people may say, why then pray? Why seek to alter what God has wisely ordered? The answer is that the arrangements of God’s providence leave room for prayer and its answer, that we may have the joy of being “fellow-workers with God” (2 Cor. 6:1). In the Collect therefore we pray that God may put away from us all hurtful things, and give us those things which be profitable for us.
 
…We pray, knowing that God’s providence will never fail. Each of us may need something different. What may be profitable for one may be useless to another, yet I think for all of us there are some things which will be profitable and which none of us can do without.
 
(a) Our Faith. Some people say that if God by His providence orders all things, then it is useless to try. That is foolish. God gave man a free will, so He limited Himself, and cannot force us to do His will. If man makes war, God cannot stop it, but He does bring good out of evil by His providence. Sin is war against God. Our faith in Him leads us to pray that He may give us things profitable for us, that our sin may not prevent Him from giving us these things.
 
(b) Our Hopes. When faced with difficulties or troubles, people lose not only their faith, but their hope. We hope for things unseen, not the things we can see. God will never let us down even though man may do so, because of His never-failing providence. That does not mean we shall not have to bear our troubles, which may be the Cross the Lord has called us to bear. Count your blessings, then you will bear your Cross cheerfully, knowing your hope is in God, and He will never fail us.
 
(c) Our Love. If we retain our faith and hope in God, then we are bound to love Him and for His sake we shall love others. Love begets love. The more love we give away, the more we shall receive in return, and so you see how God can give things profitable for us. We must use our free will aright, otherwise hurtful things may be our lot. God helps those who help themselves. Besides all this, we have the Church and Sacraments. They come through God’s never-failing providence, and they are profitable for us’.

from Teaching the Collects, 1965, by H.E. Sheen

‘This is surely one of the most lovely collects in the book. The beauty of its phrasing is matched by the depth and soundness of its religious feeling.
 
In its address it emphasises both the power and the goodness of God. It carries over from the last collect the thought of the good things God holds in store for those who love him. It reminds us that he can not only create such things but bestow them on whom he will. He is the author and also the giver of all good things, and we are therefore happy to repose on his power.
 
We ask… that he will graft in our hearts the love of his name. The name, as we know, stands for the personality. We ask that love of him may be so grafted in our hearts that it may grow there and become part of our very being as the twig becomes part of the tree into which it has been grafted.
 
We think of the glowing and tender hymns that have been written on this theme: Newton’s “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds”, Bernard’s “Jesu, the very thought of thee”, and Theodosius’ “Jesu, name all names above”, and we realise that such love of God is the very breath of adoration in the soul, without which all life would become void and meaningless’.

​from Reflections on the Collects, 1964
​by William Wand KCVO, 1885-1977 (Bishop of London 1945-1955)

‘Out of our confidence in God’s good providence arises our joy in the work he has given us to do. There is in fact no happiness in human life quite like that of feeling that we are doing the one thing God wants us to do. We feel that we are “in tune with the infinite”, that we are working in harmony with a universe which at the roots of its being, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, is essentially rational. There is a good purpose in existence, and we are working to bring it out.
 
Thus we are bold enough to think that all history is organised for the Church and for the accomplishment of its proper ends. We may suffer many disappointments and temporary setbacks but the ultimate denouement is secure. “Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom”. “Ye shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel”.
 
The joy that this thought brings is not effervescent or easily dissipated. It is consonant with all godly quietness, that is, not a slothful lethargy, but an interior activity that preserves a perfect calm because it rests upon God.
 
…God’s governance of the world enables us to preserve that attitude of calm activity in perpetuity. We have lots to do, but we do it without fret or fuss, because we are really glad to be doing it and because we know that the issue is safe in the hands of God’.

​from Reflections on the Collects, 1964
​by William Wand KCVO, 1885-1977 (Bishop of London 1945-1955)

‘[T]his initiative of Pope Benedict is a response to a holy desire - your holy desire - both as groups and as individuals; that its purpose is to open a new way for the unity of the Catholic Church, visible under the successor of Peter, to be enlarged. It is a generous initiative and one which has always expected a generous response. 
 
…“Anglicanorum Coetibus” seeks not only to offer a new invitation to those seeking the full communion of the Catholic Church, but it also seeks to enrich the Church with “elements of sanctification and truth” to be found within what is called “Anglican patrimony”. “Anglicanorum Coetibus” seeks to release that “force” by which Catholic unity can be more fully and visibly expressed, its beauty made more evident and its appeal more widely appreciated. Here it is so important to note that mission and communion are inextricably bound together. 
 
…It is never easy to do something new in total fidelity to something familiar to so many. The tension is clear: for some the newness appears to be outside the familiar, not truly belonging to what they already know and love; for others it is important to move beyond the familiar precisely so as to demonstrate newness. So the questions still arise in the minds of many: on the one hand, some will ask if members of the Ordinariate are really Catholics? On the other, those who have joined the Ordinariate will ask if they are being truly distinctive enough or whether absorption into diocesan parishes and structures will be the inevitable end? This is not an easy path. 
 
…This, I believe, is your challenge: to make evident aspects of the truth and beauty contained in Catholic teaching and life in a way that may have a particular appeal to sensitivities fashioned by the Anglican tradition and influence. This, perhaps, is at the heart of the specific gift you bring to our Church and to our common task of evangelisation’.

from an address by Vincent, Cardinal Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster
to the first Ordinariate Festival, Westminster, September 2014

O how glorious is the kingdom in which all the Saints rejoice with Christ,
and, clad in white robes, follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.

V. Let the Saints be joyful in glory. R. Let them rejoice in their beds.

1. I sing a song of the saints of God,
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green;
They were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.
 
2. They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right for Jesus’ sake
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
And there’s not any reason, no, not the least,
Why I shouldn’t be one too.
 
​3. They lived not only in ages past;
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too.

Lesbia Scott, 1898-1986

In the Calendar of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter today is the memorial of Our Lady of the Atonement. It is an observance rich in significance for the Ordinariate in North America since Our Lady, under this title, is the patroness of the first Pastoral Provision parish within the United States, Our Lady of the Atonement, in Texas, established in 1983 under the care of Fr Christopher Phillips.

The Pastoral Provision is essentially the precursor to the Ordinariate in the United States and Canada, provided for by Pope St John Paul II in 1981 to allow for the establishment of personal parishes, the ordaining of Anglican priests to the Catholic priesthood, and the retention of elements of Anglican liturgical practice, in a form which later came to be known as the ‘Anglican Use’. In 2017 the Vatican determined that those remaining parishes of the Pastoral Provision that had not yet entered into the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter were to be transferred to its jurisdiction. It was at this time that Our Lady of the Atonement entered the fold. 

​​The devotion of Our Lady of the Atonement has its roots in the life and work of an Anglo-Papalist priest, Lewis Wattson. In 1899 Wattson, together with a small group of Anglican nuns, founded the Society of the Atonement, referencing Romans 5:11 (“We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement”), and professed religious vows, with Wattson taking the name Paul James Francis. From its foundation the Society, though a part of the Episcopal Church of the United States, promoted corporate reunion with the Holy See and the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. Ten years later, in 1909, the Society - seventeen members strong - realised this goal for themselves with their own corporate reception into the Catholic Church. The process of canonisation for Father Paul, now Servant of God, was opened by Cardinal Dolan in 2015.

​​Within the Catholic Church the Society soon flourished - and flourishes still. Ten years after their reception into the Church the title ‘Our Lady of the Atonement’ was approved formally by Pope Benedict XV, with today’s feast day being approved by the Holy See in 1946. Given the roots of the devotion it was fitting that Father Phillips and his former Anglican community, now reconciled with the Holy See, should choose to dedicate themselves to Our Lady under this venerable title that is so expressive of that heartfelt desire - of Christ Himself - for his followers to be one with one another in Him. As Father Paul once said: “When we, therefore, give to our Blessed Mother the title of ‘Our Lady of the Atonement’, we mean ‘Our Lady of Unity’”. Father Paul’s prayers, together with those of Our Lady, have certainly sustained the steady growth of her parish in San Antonio over the past thirty-five years, as it has sought to share the treasures of the Anglican patrimony within the Catholic Church as a way of fulfilling Our Lord's prayer that “they may be one”.  

'[Our Lady] is necessarily “of the Atonement” since it was the will of God that she play a necessary part in the atonement or redemption. This is not to say that without her man would have remained unredeemed but that God’s plan gave her a large share in the redemptive work. When we address the Blessed Mother, as “of the Atonement”, we mean then, that there is some very close bond between the atonement and her, that she belongs to the atonement and the atonement to her. Mary, although her part is in no way similar in nature to that of her divine Son’s, cooperated with Jesus Christ, as no other creature did, in his work of reconciling man with God.

Her claim to this high title rests most solidly on the fact that she consented to become, and became the mother of the Redeemer; that she suffered with Jesus during the passion; and that all graces merited for mankind by Christ have come to us through Mary’.

Fr Paul of Graymoor, Servant of God, 1863-1940

O God, who dost gather together those that have been scattered, and who dost preserve those that have been gathered: we beseech thee, through the intercession of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Atonement; that thou wouldest pour out upon thy Church the grace of unity and send thy Holy Ghost upon all mankind, that they may be one; 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.

‘We pray that we may be defended and comforted, a typical doublet but with a more special point than usual, because it puts first negatively and then positively the benefit for which we ask. We wish to be defended against all dangers and comforted in all adversities.
 
After all, we are very like children. No man can ever be so supremely self-confident that he never wants to be protected, shielded from harm. It is said that Gladstone’s favourite hymn was the Latin version of “Let me ever more abide hidden in thy wounded side”. The need that so great a statesman was not ashamed to confess is surely common to all.
 
More positively we desire comfort in adversity. “Comfort” makes one think of a mother soothing a sick child. Something of that overtone hovers about the word. But in this instance it is probably used in a sense nearer to its etymological meaning of “strengthen”. We can catch the sense if we remember the precise meaning of the word “fort” in a military connection, a fortress or strongpoint. To comfort is to make especially strong.
 
It is no doubt in this double sense that the Bible speaks of the angels comforting Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, and that Jesus could speak of his own Spirit as the Comfort (though in the latter instance there is the added thought of the advocate called in to help). In any case what we are asking for is not merely some help to relieve our pain but additional strength to enable us to meet and to bear it.
 
Dangers then may be taken to arise out of the changes and chances of this mortal life, and adversities may be taken to apply to our utmost need however and whenever experienced. If we are inclined to think that their prevalence is somewhat exaggerated and that we may quite possibly get along without encountering them at all, we should remember how many aspects of our life they cover. They may be either physical, moral, or spiritual… The toll of deaths on the roads warns us of our physical dangers. Temptations to get rick quick warn us of our moral dangers. While the materialism of modern society is a constant danger to our spiritual life.
 
All these we can face with a measure of equanimity if we rely on the defence and comfort supplied through God’s mercy’.

from Reflections on the Collects, 1964
​by William Wand KCVO, 1885-1977 (Bishop of London 1945-1955)