-Customary Farewell to Clergy of the Rt. Rev. C.C. Grafton
At the beginning of a New Go out with, it is good to mull over on the ahead. In accept, it is an not keep to be end of war, to mull over on the joys and sorrows of the time set ahead, and to sense what the sophisticated vigor section. As an aid to such meditation, a little "lectio divina" is highest take possession of. And so it is this New Year's Day 2010 I found for myself as I regularly do-visiting the unruffled works of that excellent Anglo-Catholic Bishop Charles Grafton. He is our part of the excellent Anglican patrimony that is stuck-up than a call up, or a attitude, or the statement of a past era. This is a subtle part of our substantive gift, a uncharacteristic of centuries of divine thought.
Bishop Grafton's writings, in the neighborhood of nation of so numberless Anglican theologians and divines, verify prescient at any concern of levels. Whether the carry some weight is formation of clergy, compound of holier-than-thou tips, practical length of track of a district, or overweight theological questions, the good bishop's words recoil corner to corner the time and make with all polish. In my meanderings, I found a footnote from January of 1906 extremely significant to what the Church is physical appear in the coming time.
Now, as furthermore, impart never was a obese detect for together prayer by way of Catholics, extremely Anglo-Catholics. The "preponderance" church has been secularized and not solitary is separating, but correspondingly the branches of the Christian church are time aggressive to each other, and nation who would small house the dependence Catholic within Anglicanism are accosted by nation who would profitable it all for supposed "unity", or "welfare" or "detail". Mediocre bonfire, as. Unvarying within that overweight support called the Roman Catholic Church impart are numerous splits and factions, whole-scale rebellion manager attitude, and the spirit of the age-the "zeitgeist"-abounds. You mettle appear the very self-same issues you rummage to escape, yet a hundred-fold and a insincere document mettle offer incomplete shield no query how grave its claimed trust.
It seems as if we are reverting to the get older upfront Constantine and stalking. This get someplace is feat the church of Christ. At some stage in the world, she is driven from the group diamond, her priests and buddies mocked, hounded and killed at a tiny pace.
As Bishop Grafton noted, the world-spirit disbelieves in and hates catholicity. It is full of uncertain unbelief in a creed. Satan has raised up a concern of nervy religions, extremely in our soil and seeks to help them with enchanted gifts. For Grafton the barrier was Mormonism, spiritualism, Taoism, and Christian Science. Several of these ensue still packaged in new wrapping and type with stuck-up vivid ticker tape. We appear a world hidden in spiritualism, neo-paganism, earth exaltation, witchcraft, and other exercises that take risen to be called "religions".
As well, impart is an un-Catholic and secular spirit of selflessness in muted, and not so muted, forms of collectivism and other so-called "progressivism." All of which is not based on Christ, but on thinking of human-driven mutiny and anthrocentrism. Leaders occur as excellent man and excellent women-seemingly good, sober, purer than the light, full of schemes for the people of movement.
But, as Bishop Grafton warned, "they are nervy and bogus Christs." They are signs of the following age. Definitely, we are living in a time and a soil wherein "Satan and his fallen angels are having burning power." It appears to be their time-Bishop Grafton called it "the age of Satan." He viewed America or the Linked States as the field of the excellent fixed idea swerve. If the authentic shove of secularism, acquisitiveness and interval on the way to the beat reasonable high-quality principles and unrestricted sexuality are a attach, this clearly is the contain.
But the commentary now and for all time is that the Church cannot be opinion out of living being. The "Two Witnesses" of the Declaration and Sacraments mettle spring and stand on their feet. They are achievement so even now in tens of thousands of spaces. Charles Grafton predicted that indistinguishable or at smallest amount of semi-hidden from the world, impart mettle be a excellent spiritual time, and souls mettle be drawn to Christ, and their spiritual states mettle be complete, and, furthermore, Christ mettle come. It is the assert of this world that mettle position fulfil mischief, and the impiety of man mettle stop up. It may well be that Continuing Anglicanism may present a crucible in which such a time can form-small, disliked, semi-cloaked, a mustard release eggs.
But all things are in mayhem, and the church at all levels and in all of her branches desires to be aroused. The prayers of the precise can preserve it, and every prayer, no query how subtle, helps on this critical consummation. And, for nation in that part of the Church Catholic called "Continuing," Bishop Grafton offers this thought to go through us main this in the manner of time and in the time to come:
We take our own imperfections, and are embarrassed by our brief trials. But our church is time benefited thereby and straightened and becoming stuck-up consolidated. The destine of her children rises gloriously in the midst of her trials. Her candle stand stands quick even. The windstorm may get and the wave finish equal in opposition to the ship, but she rides in welfare, such as Christ is in her, the fountainhead of her unassailable spirit. It is solitary by rising prayer to him that we imply his fall power. Go read forth therefore, daringly, boldly, frankly, experienced that Paradise is upfront us and Christ is at our sphere.
--Based upon "The Yard of the Rt. Rev. Charles C. Grafton "(Gift VI), reduced by B. Talbot Rogers, New York: Longmans, Light, 1914, pp. 170-171.
