The Accidental Ecumenist

A wonderful piece of short fiction by a well known Reformed theologian who makes great fun of Anglicans and Roman Catholics:

The Accidental Ecumenist

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Shelter in the Storm

The Feast of St. Patrick

Little comment is needed:

I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever,
by power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;
his baptism in Jordan river;
his death on cross for my salvation;
his bursting from the spicèd tomb;
his riding up the heavenly way;
his coming at the day of doom:
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
of the great love of cherubim;
the sweet “Well done” in judgment hour;
the service of the seraphim;
confessors’ faith, apostles’ word,
the patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls;
all good deeds done unto the Lord,
and purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
the virtues of the starlit heaven
the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea,
around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
the power of God to hold and lead,
his eye to watch, his might to stay,
his ear to hearken, to my need;
the wisdom of my God to teach,
his hand to guide, his shield to ward;
the word of God to give me speech,
his heavenly host to be my guard.

Christ be with me,
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ before me,
Christ beside me,
Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort
and restore me.
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ in quiet,
Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of
all that love me,
Christ in mouth of
friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.
Of whom all nature hath creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Saint Gregory, Sam Francis and Machiavelli

Aaron D. Wolf beings his recent review of Sam Francis’ Shots Fired (Chronicles Feb. 2007) with a quote from Machiavelli, “When neither their property nor honor is touched…the majority of men live content.” As expected, Wolf points out the obvious, that most men in America do not live content. In his words, we are subject to the whims of those who have:

…telepromptered their ways up to Capital Hill, which magically qualifies them to look deep within themselves and ascertain a pretty fiction they call ‘public good.’ As for honor – well, isn’t that a quaint little term? …honor means making distinctions, paying deference due a man – which suggests that some are deserving of it, while others are not. And that implies some sort of standards, derived not from popularity contest or press release, but from tradition – in other words, civilization.

And civilization suggests a people to whom that civilization belongs, a nation, which then circumscribes that civilization in a particular place, a field of cultivation, a culture. In a civilization, we speak about us and them, mine and yours – my family, our Faith, those people and their peculiar ways. Man’s contentedness, apart from the questions of sin and grace, comes from the flourishing in his native soil, loving his people and his place. The good prince does not interfere with this, or else, as Machiavelli adds, his people will not rise to defend him when he is attacked.

While our current US administration has most certainly a strain of nihilism, it can in no way be considered Machiavellian, at least by the parameters Wolf lays out in this review. As American men (and as American women – maybe even more so as American women) our property and our honor is under attack, thus so is our civilization and so is our people and so is our soil. And these things are under attack not just from the hyper-modernist and managerial forces that traditionalists know so well, but also from forces within the Church herself, in so much as those forces still claim to be within the Church. As Anglican Traditionalists, we know this too well. A slow move from truth that began in the 1930s (if not in fact in the sixteenth century!) has gathered more speed than any of us might have imagined. And it has resulted in attacks both on our property and our honor and we are not content.

St. Gregory the Great adopted a motto, a servant of the servants of God. Gregory knew that to preserve the culture and the Faith he must serve and defend the people of God. He knew that he must love his people. This is a lesson both our princes and our bishops need to learn a new for they are both at war with their people. We are left alone and must defend our soil, our family, our Faith and our culture with the equivalent of bows, arrows and slingshots. We must be watchful to identify those saints that might cling to Gregory’s mantle and serve the servants of God. We must raise those saints from the mire, give them due honor and allow and encourage them to serve. Finally we must remember what battles have been won with a simple slingshot and we must have hope.

A Brief Letter from Fountain Place

Letters from… are a tradition in certain publications though I have yet to notice them in the world of web blogs, though I could just be looking in the wrong places. Various Letters from… may become an Incarnatus feature and so consider this our first.

Fountain Place holds a spot in my memories as the ideal city neighborhood. When it was being built in the 1920s and 1930s it was the fanciest of areas in the North Carolina textile mill town of which it was a part. Still a part of that town, it continues to hold a place in the memories of those folks whose families go back a generation or more in town. And since my family does go back to at least the 1940s in this town, Fountain Place still has some of that certain particularity that once made it seem, to me, the ideal neighborhood. Fountain Place becoming home for me and my family was the result of a series of happy accidents and I often these days wish to be in the more rural areas where I was raised. But time has passed and this neighborhood has become my own tiny postage stamp of land and if I write at all my words will be shaped in some sense by its contours.

Wish you were here.

Music from St. Clement’s

A collection of music files from St. Clement’s Church in Philadelphia, PA. Most interestingly – they are free of charge and include Mass settings and several hymns.

Greetings…

Thanks for joining us at Incarnatus. We will be posting some items of interest to traditional Christians of all stripes. As your primary bloggers are members of St. Gregory’s Anglican Church in Durham, North Carolina, we invite you to visit St. Gregory’s website at www.StGregNC.org.