Author: Sir Henry

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I’m tired of religion— detoxing from social media Christianity

Sir Henry

I’m tired of religion— and I mean that in the sense that Baptists use it. Baptists love Jesus but they hate religion. I used to make fun of that, now I get it.

I’m disgusted by social media Christianity with its over the top religious zeal and false confidence which manifests itself as arrogance and judgement towards the “wrong” kinds of Christians— I don’t mean actual heresy either; I mean Protestants (Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc.) and Ecclesialists (Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, etc.) all fighting with and damning each other to hell for believing the “wrong” things, as if they’re God and they really know who’s right. The sheer arrogance! It’s infuriating.

I open Facebook and see a few little gems of wisdom and truth sandwiched in-between massive amounts of poison containing nothing but toxic, confident religious infighting that provokes (especially ecclesial) anxiety, fear, and anger.

My takeaway from all this is that the devil loves Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. If he can’t make us fall for some other vice through these platforms, he’ll make us fight amongst ourselves, which is certainly his utmost delight. The greatest deception too is that these supposed “Keyboard Warriors for Christ” spending all day bashing “heretics” think they’re actually doing His work and not the enemy’s. It’s all such bullcrap, holier than thou influencers who think they have THE truth and everyone needs to join their One True Church (whichever one that happens to be). I’m sick of it.

And maybe that anger is partly of the devil too, right? Maybe not in its origin which is righteous anger at sin but in the way the devil takes hold of it trying to take me from one extreme to the other, from being lost in the sauce and a bit of a religious zealot to the opposite extreme of despair, atheism, agnosticism, or lukewarm cultural Christianity. That’s always the danger isn’t it? Always going to the opposite error, the opposite extreme.

I just want to detox from the bullcrap, the only thing really any good here anyways is Christ himself. I’m never leaving Him. And in Christ you have those people in the church who really just love God and their neighbor as themself and tend to avoid all this infighting. That’s where you have the divine side of the church, and the love of God which is the only thing keeping me in.

In-person Christianity is so much better anyways than any of the bullcrap online. Going to church is genuinely probably my favorite time of the week, I love church, I love liturgy, I love singing, I love sermons, I love the people, I love taking holy communion, I love God. It’s when I go home that I can’t stand it when I open social media and see the infighting or get lost in my own thoughts and worries about who’s right and the “what if’s” that torment me. I think only the Holy Spirit can give that peace that transcends all understanding which many have. Reason says you “oh you must consider all the possibilities including the one that you’ve got the Gospel or church itself wrong and are hellbound for not being in the One True Church” and it can be paralyzing. Yeah, I don’t think that’s God’s voice.

My therapist once said something along the lines of “I don’t really have a ball in the game (he’s not religious) but if I subscribed to this religious worldview I’d say this stuff you’re going through would be exactly what the devil would want.”

And I know exactly what he meant— these thoughts making me anxious about what church I’m in which necessarily negate the promises and assurances of Christ and the Gospel in the scriptures under the pretext of a kind of false humility; which is really just worry about “what happens if I’m wrong”. The “what if’s” here can really make a person go crazy. And of course you have to take truth claims seriously. I’m not saying just ignore questions of why you believe what you believe. But it can be so insidious and convincing that a change in understanding of history seems to potentially nullify a plain understanding of scripture that gives assurance and peace to wearied consciences (John 5:24 and Romans 5:1 come to mind). Is this not truly the same error condemned by the Jerusalem Council in the Book of Acts— in substance if not in form? And when you aren’t rooted in those promises, that confidence, that simple, childlike trust in Jesus, these kinds of spaces can destroy you and make your life a living hell on earth. “What if”, “what if”, “what if”. Stop it. Get behind me satan.

It’s a funny trick my brain played on me in making me think that this obsessive, often anxiety fueled (and in some instances anxiety fueling) study of church history and theology was somehow the same “kind of thing” as prayer, reading scripture, of going to church. But it wasn’t. It was a distraction from those things. Yes there is a time and place for those things, but you should discern if they are what you need right now by their fruits. I don’t mean occasionally feeling convicted and anxious by a verse in scripture that seems to challenge your beliefs or sins, I’ve felt that on both sides of the ecclesial fence. I mean overall— what are the fruits of this?

Ignatius of Loyola has inspired some wonderful, (perhaps surprisingly) scriptural writings on spiritual discernment that anyone in this place can benefit from. I know Protestants who use and apply his principles— good spiritual discernment is actually denominationally agnostic.

One of the best things I did for my mental health was creating a new YouTube account and moving my Premium subscription to it. Setting rules on my iPhone to make Instagram and Facebook open in grayscale (or periodically uninstalling it) also worked wonders. The rules of the new YouTube account were simple: no religion, no politics. Now, I’ve made a couple exceptions, but as a rule this account is far better to use generally than the former. Snooze that Facebook for 30 days, or better yet leave it. Talk to someone in real life who you trust. Read the Bible, pray the Psalms. The voice you hear there is very different from the voice of Ecclesial anxiety. That alone should tell you something.

(I thought the photo provided a bit of comic relief)

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Some thoughts on the “Epic Lineup” of Icons

Sir Henry

I call it the “epic lineup” because I joke it’s something that would make everyone mad.

If these icons hung altogether on a wall many passerby’s would not think much of it. But there is a lot of history here. And someone who really understood the history would go “what?” It might make them mad. In life I do not these great Christians would have gotten along very well. Some of them even wrote to or know each other in life, and suffice it to say they were not friends. But I very much hope that is not the case in death. The “epic lineup” so far consists of:

John Calvin

Martin Luther

Francis de Sales

Pius V

Thomas More

William Tyndale

Thomas Cranmer

Alexis Toth

John Henry Newman

Cyril Lucaris

Paisios

According to at least one Christian tradition, each person here is celebrated either explicitly or de facto as a Saint, as orthodox, hence the existence of their icons. Each person here loved Jesus Christ and thought they were in the right, thought they were defending the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church against heresy and error. What did they do?

John Calvin led many Catholics into the Reformed Tradition. Francis de Sales led many Calvinized former Catholics back into the Catholic faith.

Martin Luther led many Catholics into the Lutheran tradition sparking the Protestant Reformation, and was avidly criticized by Thomas More and vice versa. Thomas More and Tyndale were enemies in many respects and mutually criticized each other, More was falsely accused by some of the reformers. When More refused to say that Henry VIII was the rightful head of the Church of England, he was killed and died a martyr of the Catholic faith. Thomas Cranmer, who composed the Book of Common Prayer and Protestantized the Church of England, was there when Thomas More was killed. He also died under Bloody Mary’s persecution of Protestants putting his hand into the fire which signed a retraction of his Protestant faith in defiance.

Later John Henry Newman, a significant figure of the “Anglo-Catholic” Oxford movement within the Church of England, became convinced the Church of Rome was the one true Church established by Jesus Christ and left the Church of England as a result, eventually becoming a Cardinal. Pius V was a Pope and leader of the counter-Reformation after Luther’s death.

Many historians agree that Cyril Lucarius who was very anti-Papal, tried to Calvinize Eastern Orthodoxy. Alexis Toth led 100,000 eastern-rite Catholics out of the Catholic church and into the Orthodox church leading to the founding of the Orthodox Church in America. Paisios was an Athonite monk who wouldn’t say an Our Father with latin (Catholic) visitors because he did not consider them to be of the same faith, I suspect he had harsher attitudes still for Protestants.

All this history. In spite of all this, are they not all brothers in Christ? I believe this to be the case.

Yet they all disagreed with one another. Who was in the right?

I don’t know what the truth is more than any of these men. I say the truth is in Christ, but so did they. I say it’s important to get the faith right, but so did they, and they hardly agreed with one another on these matters of contention. I hope and pray God has mercy on those who er in such matters, and those led by them. But what of us? Am I more sure than they?

When one insists dogmatically that an encounter of Christ is false because Jesus did not tell the visionary to join the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Catholic Church or the Protestant Church but something else, even if he is rejecting genuine personal revelation, does God overlook his stubbornness as a part of his faith or condemn it as pride? Is it the virtue of humility or the vice of lack of faith to say “I don’t know who is right. I don’t know where the fullness of truth is to be found”? I do not know.

Each of these men would answer in life “it’s here! The fullness of truth is here!” But who are they? They claim to do the will of God, but what does God say? Lord help me for I do not know. Many saints say prayer and fasting is the way to discern such questions, not thinking and the rational mind. I think perhaps this is true. The rational mind is not the infallible guide modernity often makes itself out to be.

For instance,

“Elder Paisios teaches: ‘The devil does not hunt after those who are lost; he hunts after those who are aware, those who are close to God. He takes from them trust in God and begins to afflict them with self-assurance, logic, thinking, criticism. Therefore we should not trust our logical minds. Never believe your thoughts.

‘Live simply and without thinking too much, like a child with his father. Faith without too much thinking works wonders. The logical mind hinders the Grace of God and miracles. Practice patience without judging with the logical mind.’

Elsewhere Elder Paisius counseled: ‘We ought always to be careful and be in constant hesitation about whether things are really as we think. For when someone is constantly occupied with his thoughts and trusts in them, the devil will manage things in such a way that he will make the man evil, even if by nature he was good.’”

“The ancient fathers did not trust their thoughts at all, but even in the smallest things, when they had to give an answer, they addressed the matter in their prayer, joining to it fasting, in order in some way to ‘force’ Divine Grace to inform them what was the right answer according to God. And when they received the ‘information,’ they gave the answer.

“Today I observe that even with great matters, when someone asks, before he has even had the time to complete his question, we interrupt him and answer him. This shows that not only do we not seek enlightenment from the Grace of God, but we do not even judge with the reason God gave us. On the contrary, whatever our thoughts suggest to us, immediately, without hesitation, we trust it and consent to it, often with disastrous results.

“Almost all of us view thoughts as being something simple and natural, and that is why we naively trust them. However, we should neither trust them nor accept them.

“Thoughts are like airplanes flying in the air. If you ignore them, there is no problem. If you pay attention to them, you create an airport inside your head and permit them to land!”

Yet I know here St. Thomas Aquinas may here have disagreed with St. Paisios to a large extent. Reason certainly is not useless.

So you see, I am still figuring things out. For myself and my discernment, I cannot speak highly enough of the Surrender Novena, and I always say:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have Mercy on me a sinner.

What are your thoughts?

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Unworthy to Confess My Sins

Sir Henry

Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. I am not worthy to eat the Bread of Life or approach the Chalice of Salvation. I am not worthy to approach the confessional and have my sins forgiven time and time again by You, the most merciful Savior. Many feel held back from confession by their unworthiness, they feel their sins are too great to be forgiven. They feel they do not deserve it.

What shall I say then, when the devil reminds me that I am not worthy to even step foot in a Church, let alone to receive the Sacraments or be saved? I tell him that he is right, I admit it. I am guilty as charged, what of it? For Christ did not call the righteous to repentance but sinners, and I have been the worst of sinners. What of it? If I were to deny Christ’s Mercy, I would say he died for nothing, for none of us truly deserve to be saved.

Our Lord, it is recalled, once said to Saint Faustina, “The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to My mercy” (Diary, 723). Jesus is the one who is asking us to confess our sins, it is the devil who suggests we somehow “honor” God by refusing His mercy and forgiveness. So when the Lord bids you to come, you go. If we think we do the laborer a favor when we reject the very work of his hands we certainly er.

Yes we are not worthy. God’s mercy and love is scandalous, unmerited, undeserved. I could sing praises to the Lord for all of eternity and it would never be enough to repay even a single drop of His precious blood shed on my behalf. He doesn’t ask us to. It is Christ who fills the infinite void between God and man. It is Christ who calls us to repentance. It is the devil who by any and all means possible endeavors that to refuse to do so.

If this is you, then take this as your sign to go to confession. God loves you, do not be afraid or ashamed. Run to Him. He is waiting for you with open arms.

And when you doubt, you fear, and say “that was not a valid confession” remember what Christ said to St. Faustina (I am paraphrasing) when she asked if a nuns past confessions were valid because the nun was afraid, “your lack of confidence in my mercy hurts me more than all of your past sins combined.”

Prayers

A Prayer For The Christian Clergy

Sir Henry
Image Credit: Last Supper by Bill Bell (no copyright violation intended)

This is a simple prayer I wrote for the Christian Clergy and for the truly Christian unity of the Church:

O my Good God, I ask you please to Bless and shower your Grace upon those who give up so much of their lives to serve You and Your church as leaders and authority figures. Watch over all who Shepherd your flock. Amen.

I ask You to bless and watch over them— Your Preachers and Pastors, Your Priests and Patriarchs, Your Deacons and Bishops, Your Reverends and Rectors, your Popes and Ministers, your Missionaries and Elders, your lay Leaders and Teachers, and your many oft forgotten humble servants of Christ, who lead in and serve Your Church without titles or formal offices. Bless O Lord all these who dedicate their lives to leading Your flock. Amen.

Keep them, O Lord, from teaching grave error, and from leading souls astray. Deliver them, O God of all creation, in the name of Jesus, and by the power of the Precious Blood, from all false doctrine, heresy, and error, and from the wickedness and snares of the devil. Convict them, Holy Spirit, of the truths of Your eternal Word so that they may come to know the fullness of Your Truth and serve it once they’ve found it. Amen.

O my Good Jesus, Your Church that You willed be one has been divided by our sins like the many branches of a tree. But in You, O Lord, we who are in Christ are all still One Body in spirit, united to Your Mystical Body, Your Holy Church by our Baptism, by our Faith, Hope, and Love. Forgive us our schisms, O Lord, as you forgive us our sins. Come soon Christ Jesus, and reconcile our sad divisions by the infinite power of Your Love. Help those who lead in Your name to find Your sacred truths and accept them, and to be in this world but not of it. May ever Your will, not be ours be done. Amen.

Accept, Heavenly Father we ask you, our pleadings for the healing and truly Christian unity of your Church through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

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The Proper Response to Reception of Holy Communion

Sir Henry

I tell you in all the universe, I think there is no greater a way for God to tell us how much he loves us than those words: “take, eat, this is my Body” and “take, drink, this is my Blood”. What else can we say to that but: “I love you too. Thank You.”

And it doesn’t matter how you regard the question of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; whether you believe in memorialism, consubstantiation, transubstantiation, or something else. This is something universally applicable to all Christians:

“I love you too.”

Think of what the Virgin Mother felt when she first heard those words, how she knew only all too well what they meant, she who nursed Him as a babe and stayed with him as he bore the cross. Her perspective is what opened my eyes to the marvel of Communion. Who is this God who gives his body and blood up for you? He cannot say “I love you” in any greater way, no. What else can he do to get our attention but taking up the cross on my behalf, I who rejected him so many times in word and deed? Can he be anything else but Love and Mercy itself?

Don’t let his agony which he took on for you go to waste by rejecting Him. False humility under the guide of Pride is not approaching Him because we are not worthy. None of us are truly worthy, that’s sort of the point. It is why we Catholic Christians say every time we get up for Holy Communion: “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” (Based on Matthew 8:8). Those who are said to receive Holy Communion unworthily in 1 Corinthians 11 are unworthy in a very different sense. One God hastens to welcome to His table, the other he does not.

Accept Him, know Him, love Him. He did all of this for you. God bore your sins on the cross so that you could inherit eternal life. So not rebuke Him, and do not take Holy Communion lightly. So many offend Him who receive unworthily; by those knowingly living in a state of unrepentant sin, by those who do not believe, by those who receive without reverence. For such it is better that they not receive at all.

Jesus make us worthy!

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On The Nature of Grave Historic Evils

Sir Henry

The Abortion Doctor: Hero or a Criminal?

As I’m sure everyone knows, abortion is a complicated and divisive issue. Is an abortion doctor a hero or a criminal? Some would say a hero, others a criminal.

Now, I am of the opinion that up to a point reasonable, decent people can disagree on this issue leaning to one side or the other and still remain reasonable, decent people. There is a point earlier on in pregnancy at which the question of whether or not it is a baby being killed is far more ambiguous. There is also a point later on however where the question is not at all ambiguous. I hope we can all agree that at least once a fetus is unambiguously a fully formed baby, that violently ending its life for no reason beyond “personal choice” is gravely evil, even if you believe it is a choice a woman has a right to freely make. If we cannot agree on that, well, I’d at least encourage you to read the next few paragraphs.

Not too long ago I read an article published in the Boston Review called ‘Why I Perform Abortions‘. In this article by Dr. Christine Henneberg defends her pro-choice position and describes a normal second trimester abortion which she typically performs several times a day:

“On a recent afternoon in my clinic, fifteen years after the earthworm experiment, a young medical assistant named Jenny approaches me between patients. “Can I show you something?”

She pulls up an ultrasound video on her phone: a fetus, its perfectly formed limbs, fingers and toes, squirming and jumping in its wedge-shaped sonographic window, bounded by the fuzzy, white-gray walls of a uterus.

“Awwww! Adorable!” I look at Jenny; she is beaming. I have known for some time that she is pregnant. (She occasionally asked for my advice during the eight months it took her to conceive.) “How many weeks are you now?” I ask her.

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen weeks! Wow! Look at that little baby. So cute!” It wasn’t long ago that I was pregnant with my own children, gazing lovingly at their ultrasound photos.

The demographics of our clinic closely reflect those around the country: most patients are low-income. (In California public health insurance pays for abortion care.) The vast majority of my patients are in their first trimester, but I typically perform a few second-trimester abortions each day. Later that afternoon, Jenny assists me during a fifteen-week procedure. The fetus on the ultrasound screen looks just like Jenny’s, in every recognizable, perfectly formed detail: fingers, toes, beating heart. But this image is very different because of the context in which I am viewing it.

The woman is lying on the table, awake but sedated by medications. I dilate her cervix and place a small plastic tube inside her uterus. I watch the ultrasound screen. I flip a switch; a humming noise fills the room. At this instant, the fetus seems to jump as though startled; then it squirms in the tight, already shrinking space of the uterus. It continues to move in this very human, baby-like way until the last instant, when it is overpowered by the force of the vacuum and sucked through a plastic tube, whisked out of the uterus and into a glass jar in a rush of blood. Gone.”

The same horrific scene of another conscious, fully formed human fetus apparently fighting for its life during a second trimester ultrasound guided abortion was witnessed by Abby Johnson, one of the most prominent pro-life activists today. It’s actually what led her to quit her job as a Planned Parenthood director and switch sides on the issue. What was horrific and clearly evil to Abby Johnson upon first witnessing is just business as usual for Dr. Henneberg who wrote the article quoted above, and for countless other abortion providers.

What is so perplexing about a great social evil that it blinds the perpetrator to the fact that what they are doing is evil at all? Or society at large? How did I once so ardently close my mind to the ethical concerns of the “other side” on this particular issue? That is for another article. But Dr. Henneberg could easily share a Facebook post remembering the Holocaust and fail to see the irony.

Even more perplexing, others will read the section of the article I emboldened for emphasis and come to the opposite conclusion. Instead of being horrified they will say: “this is actually something good that should be celebrated, and allowed at any point and for any reason”. At most they would admit the tragedy of the situation but still defend the necessity of allowing it. They might even call the doctor a hero or a saint for providing such a “necessary service”.

How can this be?

Social Evils Portrayed As Good or Necessary Historically

The perpetrators and defenders of nearly every great social evil throughout human history genuinely believed they were doing and defending a great social good. Think about that, they did horrendous evil and thought were genuinely, completely convinced that they were doing great good. Terrorism, human sacrifice, slavery, genocide, etc. The perpetrators all thought they were doing good! All of them. There are too many examples to count: Aztec priests, Nazi concentration camp guards, Rwandan Hutu extremists, Bolshevik Checkists, American slave masters, etc.

The value system of their times, their cultures, they all lauded them and what they were doing as good, as necessary, sometimes even as heroic. We look back on them today with eyes of clarity and disdain. And it’s tempting to ask: can we really blame them? Can we say they didn’t know any better? Of course we know their guilt was real. They are guilty as charged. They really are guilty, because on a certain level, they knew. And you can say “but this” and “but that” but on a certain level you know too. The most terrifying thing is that for most of them, those who were the actual perpetrators of these great social crimes, it only took a split second decision to damn them.

No matter the external circumstances and social forces, in almost every case there was without doubt a decisive moment in the heart of every perpetrator, a moment of clarity where they really saw the ugliness of what they were doing, or of what was being done by their friends, to that person or group history remembers as the victims of these great social crimes. Do you think. Dr. Hanneberg had no stirring in her conscience the first time she saw an unborn baby that was about to be killed moving as though startled, squirming away from the instrument, moving in a panicked but very human, baby like way? But she didn’t listen to that voice, even if it was screaming at her: “THIS IS WRONG.” Do you think an SS soldier really felt nothing the first time he saw a child shot dead? But they persisted.

Their natural and, perhaps only initial, reaction of horror, sorrow, disgust, etc. was in fact the only defensible response to what they were witnessing. Their first reaction to the horror was the most accurate precisely because their hearts had not yet been hardened by the persistence of their wills to do evil. But they are guilty precisely because they made a decision not to listen to that little voice telling them that this was wrong. It was a decision they only had to make once, a decision that in most cases decided the fate of their souls, an upward or downward spiral continuing ad infinitum from that moment onwards. And the deeper you sink the harder it is to turn back, the greater grace is for those who do.

For those who are guilty, it was, really was, their choice. They chose hell. They could have walked away, they didn’t. There are definitive moments in one’s life where their true character is truly tested. Second chances here are rare. A man throws up after witnessing a family murdered in cold blood by his brothers in arms. His heart is on fire with guilt. Does he leave them? Refuse to fight with them any longer? No, he continues with them. Eventually he participates in the atrocities himself. It gets easier the more he does it, he’s sinking lower into hell and he thinks this is somehow good. Because as ugly as it is, he’s doing it for some alleged greater good. Perhaps he even convinces himself that his acquired hardness of heart is a virtue— what folly!

They are guilty because they decided to kill their hearts in regards to one’s being harmed by their actions: the one they did not even consider. It was that initial choice they made in their own hearts that ended up damning them. Before anyone else was killed or enslaved or victimized the initial sin was first and foremost in their own hearts. They saw first that the fruit was good for food. They ate the apple, they chose the lie.

These were, I must stress, in every meaningful way ordinary men and women. They weren’t monsters motivated by malice itself, far from it. Paradoxically and terrifyingly their humanity itself is what motivated them more than anything else to persist in their evil. They thought of the good of another person or group, usually their own, that was benefiting by their heinous actions. They often thought of this person or group with genuine compassion and empathy, and to the other, the victims, with cold indifference and dehumanization, perhaps even hatred.

They loved their friends and families, they did not however love their enemies. Fear often played a role in their black and white view of the world. They did not love their neighbor. They did not love the ones they hurt. They loved so much so they often did all this for those they loved— so there would be a good harvest, so they would not have to grow up in a world with capitalists, or Jews, or unwanted babies, or what have you. Out of love they sent millions of innocent to their deaths. Why should they ever consider the victims when their mission is so great and noble a cause?

“Don’t be sentimental, gods must be fed, there must be a good harvest.”

But my God, the innocent children you sacrificed!

“These people are animals, parasites, the work has to be done, they cannot be allowed to pollute future generations.”

But my God, these were once your neighbors and friends that you now kill!

“These are enemies of the people comrade, we have no choice, a revolution is not a dinner party.”

But my God, how many innocent people did you kill?

“The economy would completely collapse if we set them free, they are a brutish animal race anyhow of an inferior intelligence, it is only natural and right that they serve us.”

But my God, you’ve terrorized and killed millions of innocent people!

It is a clump of cells, a fetus and not a baby, and even if it was, it’s their body and their business period.

But my God, they’re killing a fully formed baby just because the mother wants it dead!

And do they care? Do the objections of conscience move them to repentance? Of course not. They make excuses. They deny the sin of their crime. More than this, they proclaim their wicked acts to be good and necessary. And that is how history ought to remember them also, as the wicked lot they are. This is, sadly, how history will remember Dr. Henneberg and those like her.

Even when the whole world said to them, “this is good”, they are still without excuse. Because they did not listen to that little voice inside them that said, “this is wrong, the world is wrong.” For such has it always been, and they who persist in such evils will be held to answer for it.

If you do not listen to your conscience when it first accuses you, soon you won’t be able to hear it at all. You will become blind first to your sin, and then to your own blindness. Take care then to listen to your conscience when it first speaks to you. And seek to rouse it up if you know you have silenced it by repeated injuries. This is a Grace. Long for it, pray for it, seek after it. If you do not know if you have done such a thing, ask that it be made clear to you. It is very difficult but with God all things are possible. I myself can attest to this. For as long as we are still breathing, even the most hardened of hearts can come to true repentance. Pray that they will also.

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It’s the Wedding Feast of the Lamb and everybody gets an invitation!

Sir Henry

An essay on Ecumenism

It’s the wedding feast of the Lamb and everybody gets an invitation! Everyone who says “yes” is called to hand out invitations. It’s very important because the feast is happening very soon!

So we have to go to the other people who have RSVP’d to attend the wedding feast as well, not just the ones in our party. We have to go even to the ones who we haven’t talked to in a long time, even the ones we fought with in the past and stopped talking to over our disagreements, even the ones we disagree with on several, even important, things. We have to start mingling again so we can work together to send out more invitations.

We have to focus on the people who’ve said “no” or only “maybe” to the wedding feast, and also the ones who don’t even know there is a wedding at all. They can figure out which party they want to sit with later, the most important thing is that they get the invitation.

But listen, even among us is the spirit of distraction. It is an unclean spirit. It does not want us to work together. It wants to stop the wedding. We cannot listen to the ones, even the ones among us, who want to sow discord among the wedding guests. They think they do well, they er.

It is okay that we are a little different and that we stay a little different. Some of those differences are important, and that’s okay. We don’t have to agree on everything to work together. We can deal with our differences another day once when the wedding feast begins. And by then they won’t matter. It will be for the wedding Lamb, not us, to sort out.

Today we have to spend more time giving out invitations and less time critiquing the other guests who thought it proper to show up to the wedding wearing funny hats and polka dot ties (even though they are, yes, wrong for thinking so).

The other guests can be a little weird, that’s true. But actually I think they sometimes do some things better than we do them. I think they sometimes have better ways of giving out the invitations. I think they sometimes have better envelopes. I think they sometimes explain the wedding better than we do. And I think we do some things better too, maybe they’d see that if we talked with one another once in a while.

So why aren’t we talking with one another? Why this wall of silence? The enemy is united, so why are we divided? Did we not all say “yes” to the invitation?

Now some will say they are going to the wedding feast but have a different address altogether written on the envelope. Well, it won’t help others make it to the wedding if we ask them to help make us envelopes, or to help us send out invitations. Some people think they can show up without wearing any clothes at all and still meet the dress code, or that they can only say yes and not actually show up and still be counted among the wedding guests. I do not say that we should solicit their help. If they fundamentally disagree with what all wedding guests everywhere have held in common since the wedding was first announced, well, that’s a problem. They might actually not be among us.

But some will make such declarations even of lesser points. Some of the wedding guests will look at us and say, “You’re wearing leather dress shoes without laces, how can you be a wedding guest? I don’t believe you’re one of us. I think you’re one of the ones from outside who want to stop the wedding!” And it hurts to hear these words, but we cannot make them see what is right in front of them. They are free to go their own way. We are just glad they said “yes” to the invitation. We cannot waste our time. We wish them well and seek others who see clearly that the same spirit that dwells in them so also dwells in us.

And so we have to build bridges, and get to work. We have to choose Charity. It’s very important, there isn’t a lot of time!

So all you Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians, all you who believe in the Trinity and the historic creeds, all you Christians who say that God is One and Christ is Lord:

It’s time to start talking to one another again. Satan wants us divided against the world if we are divided, or united in error if we are united. Let us do neither.

Let us be ourselves and work together for the Kingdom even as we are. Even spreading the message of the Christian faith together as we are. You fear ecumenism because you rightfully understand the consequences of its excesses; loss of identity amongst other Christians, loss of Christ amongst the world. I share those fears. I fear its opposite as well. Yet I am not here promoting excesses, nor dismissing them.

Does this worry you? Do not even enter into our so-called “errors” of my position which I defend as sound doctrine. Work together with the rest of the still breathing, consciously Christian body of Christ regardless; so stay Orthodox, stay Catholic, stay Protestant. Do not compromise your tradition even a little bit. I am far less concerned here with “converting” you to my tradition or I “converting” to yours. Just do whatever Christ tells you, and keep saying “yes” to God.

But let us talk to one another again, let us at least do that.

And if we do that, well, I believe the current trend will not continue; I believe we’ll see a real revival of the church in the 21st century. Because there will be charity among Christians towards other Christians. And wherever charity is, there God is. Ubi cáritas et amor, Deus ibi est. I pray it may be so. Amen.

P.S. Oh, and I am not making stuff up here. When you open yourself up to the real diversity and richness of the Christian faith, you see we really are much more similar than we are different. Ah, if I could only show you what spiritual fruits this practice has wrought in my own life! If you could come with me on a typical weekend to all the churches I attend, and do that for sometime… It really is something.

I feel very strongly that the theologically strong/ informed members of every Church I go to, but especially its clergy and leadership, would benefit greatly from attending the services of other traditions or denominations– of meeting other leaders and clergy from other traditions and denominations, even ones quite different form their own. If they did that with a spirit of genuine charity, ah! But these are things for other writings. This is my first post on this new blog, so welcome.

Ave Christus Rex!