Author: Stephen Holmgren

I have been an Episcopal priest for thirty eight years, having served in parishes and in academia. My interests include art and theology, liturgy and spirituality, and I love to go sailing whenever I can.

Beauty and Authority

A noticeable antipathy toward “authority” pervades our culture. We think of authority as external to us, and as having the capacity to constrain our free choices and self-expression. Modern and ancient examples support this impression. Think of recent stories about the Port Authority of NY & NJ and the closure of traffic lanes leading to a major bridge. Or the Gospel centurion who referred to himself as “a man under authority,” who also had soldiers under him.

Given this, it may seem incongruous to mention the words “beauty” and “authority” in the same breath. But then, compare these sentences: “I was arrested by the authorities;” and, “I was arrested by her beauty.” Beauty has authority!

Years after studying with Oliver O’Donovan, I remain curious about an insight he offers concerning authority. Put in my own words, an authority is something that makes our responses or actions intelligible. When we defer to an older person, we are responding in part to the authority of age. If we set aside a long-held idea when presented with a compelling reason to see the matter differently, we respond to the authority of truth. The natural authority of beauty functions in a similar way. By selecting a stunning handmade cross for our church rather than one from a religious supply catalogue, we are responding to the authority of beauty.

These examples help us recognize how authority functions internally within us as we respond to the world. Authority is not simply a feature of our encounter with various officials and institutions, and it does more than compel. Authority invites responses by summoning our attention and prompting our discernment. This concept of authority imbues a prayer for the feast of The Transfiguration:

“O God, who on the holy mount revealed… your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty…”

The beauty of the King arouses our deference by his appearance. As we look at him more and more, we disregard competing objects of attention. Beholding the fair beauty of the Lord, we will seek him in his temple (Ps 27).

The above painting, Transfiguration (2003), by Armando Alemdar Ara, is reproduced with permission from the artist. The prayer is a collect in the Book of Common Prayer, p. 243.

Toward a “Catholic” Vision [part 2]

In part 1, I shared how Ralph McMichael offers this brief but evocative definition of the word “catholic.”

Catholic means the whole truth, about the whole God, for the whole world.

Ralph’s concise definition calls for intentional follow-through. When we hear ‘catholic’ in conversation, we should anticipate and hope for an encompassing understanding of this word. This can be a first step in helping us to aim at a holistic (and therefore holy) vision of the world.

The challenge I find in Ralph’s definition is for all of us who are baptized to be “catholic” in a genuinely biblical, apostolic and ecclesial way. This means seeking and finding wholeness and holiness within the vocation we have received together in Baptism.

Embracing a larger concept of what it means to have a catholic vision opens us to
a more expansive vision of God’s Mission throughout the world. Jesus has embraced and empowered all of us to go out as grace-enabled participants in God’s continuing mission to redeem and transform the world.

We desire ‘wholeness.’ Encouraged by the culture around us, we think of achieving wholeness as our project, as our task to fulfill, or the solution to our therapeutic needs. Approached in a more encompassing way, wholeness is reconnected with God’s Mission in the world, rather than reduced to being a feature of our personal lives. God nurtures this greater wholeness through our life in community. We express God’s Mission best when we celebrate the Eucharist together.

God’s Mission is always greater than we can ask or imagine. It is not just for us, for our families and friends. God’s Mission enables us to live into the whole truth about the whole God for the whole world. As we live forward, into this wider vision, we will find that it involves beauty and goodness, as well as our perennial concern for what is true.

On this, his feast day, we can join St. Richard of Chichester (d. 1253) in his prayer, “Day by day, dear Lord, of thee three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, [and] follow thee more nearly, day by day.”

{St. Richard’s words are quoted from Hymn 654, The Hymnal 1982 / the photo above, from a Eucharist at St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco, is by Mark Pritchard, (c) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License}

Toward a “Catholic” Vision [part 1]

In an earlier age, having catholic tastes or a catholic perspective meant breadth in one’s approach to the world and to objects of interest within it. A “catholic” vision would therefore be expressed in terms of what it includes rather than what it does not.

We live in an age when words and ideas are prone to partisan and ideological interpretation. Too easily, we settle for narrow and limited meaning. When we now hear the word “catholic,” we assume the reference is to an institutional branch of Christianity. Though we find the word “catholic” in the universally accepted Apostles’ Creed, we allow lesser concerns to shape our concept of what it means for the Church to be catholic.

My friend and former teaching colleague, Ralph McMichael, offers this brief but evocative definition of the word:

Catholic means the whole truth, about the whole God, for the whole world.

His definition may help us reclaim the word, so that even ‘free church’ believers might be comfortable using it. Catholic has to do with the whole, with what is universal.

A catholic vision will include all that is beautiful and all that is good, as well as all that is true. Arguably, anything less falls short of being catholic.

I am continually challenged not to settle for less than this encompassing and holistic vision.

Nature is Graced

On this day, the anniversary of his death, Anglicans and Episcopalians remember the saintly John Keble, a priest and poet, and theologian (1792-1866). He is associated with what came to be called the “Oxford Movement” and the Catholic Revival in the Anglican Communion. For Keble, this meant something more like high principles rather than what we now call ‘high church,’ for he had little interest in outward things like elaborate liturgy or clerical dress. More important to Keble was a sacramental view of Creation and a regard for the way that God infuses the whole world with grace.

He is also remembered as the author of The Christian Year, a collection of poems written in relation to the Scripture texts appointed in the Prayer Book lectionary for Sundays.

Fragments from two of his poems for the Epiphany season evoke Keble’s regard for God’s generous gifts of grace within and through the natural world around us.

From a poem for The First Sunday after the Epiphany:

Soft as Memnon’s harp at morning,
To the inward ear devout,
Touched by light, with heavenly warning
Your transporting chords ring out.
Every leaf in every nook,
Every wave in every brook,
Chanting with a solemn voice,
Minds us of our better choice.

From a poem for The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany:

When souls of highest birth
Waste their impassioned might on dreams of earth,
He opens Nature’s book,
And on His glorious Gospel bids them look,
Till, by such chords as rule the choirs above,
Their lawless cries are tuned to hymns of perfect love.

The Arms of Love

Today we commemorate Charles Henry Brent, who in 1902 was called from a slum parish in Boston to serve as Missionary Bishop of the Philippines, arriving on the same ship as William Howard Taft, the territorial Governor and future President. Brent’s missionary vision was evident in his sustained commitment to minister to those at the margins, his work toward ecumenical unity among churches, and his pastoral oversight as a bishop. A much loved prayer written by Brent is now one of the prayers for mission in the Book of Common Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. (BCP:101)

Through our small hands, his great arms of love still reach out to embrace the world, and touch everything within it. Through our hands those arms of love transform our work and our play, so that small activities and projects become part of his greater and divine work of love.

Not just through the hands of the priest who reaches out to hold a baby at the font, but also through the hands of a neonatal nurse who tends a newborn in the hospital; the hands of a teacher who writes a supportive comment on a young students worksheet, and a parent who tucks a child into bed at night.

The Lord of glory stretches out arms of love through the hands of painters who help us see light, the hands of poets who put down patterns of words to help us perceive what is true, and the hands of musicians who express harmonies rooted in a beauty more profound than we can create by ourselves.

I hope you see glimpses of those great arms of love at work through your hands.

(Shown above is John Singer Sargent’s bronze casting of a plaster study he did (around 1900) in preparation for his mural series at the Boston Public Library. Both the Hirshorn Museum in Washington and the Tate in London have examples.)

Annunciation

Today we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation to Mary. The angel of God brought her “good news” ~ but news she could hardly have understood at the time. She would bear a child, who would be called Son of the Most High. I have always loved Annunciation paintings, and this one by Simone Martini (from 1333), in particular.

When the angel appeared to Mary, she encountered God’s holiness and righteousness. Like so many times in history, God’s presence pushes everything else into clarity. The bright light of Glory throws into relief all the dark places in the world – all the hidden corners of our lives. We usually react to this with disquiet and concern. We hear that God’s word comes as Good News. And yet we experience God’s call to become a new person, or do a new thing, as a fearful invitation!

For me, it has been a call to move from one beloved congregation to what I could only hope would be another. For both you and me, it will be a call to speak to someone with whom we have a misunderstanding, or forgive someone whom we have failed to forgive. When God calls us to new life, we are often afraid. We think of what we fear might happen: like losing a familiar home and community; or setting aside our pride, and opening ourselves to being hurt again.

Look at how Martini portrays Mary’s response to the angel! Gabriel visits her with holy news about the child she will bear, who will bring salvation to the world. Mary draws back from his message, fearful about what it might mean. We know it turns out for good. But at first, God’s call can frighten us. A change to something new, always means a change from where we started.

The scene reminds me of spiritual advice I received years ago – advice that helped me be willing to leave a tenured seminary position and return to parish ministry. I had a sense of call, but the prospect of this change was frightening. A wise friend said to me, “when you go toward the heart of your fear in faith, God will always meet you there with power.”

A Season of Glory!

Walking forward through Lent, with a vision of the Transfiguration behind us and a vision of the Resurrection before us, we journey through a landscape of Glory! Only recently have I come to view this season in this way. Long has it seemed dreary and gloomy, a series of weeks more characterized by what is not than by what is.

But now, I relish the drab Lenten array fabric and the absence of ornament, a spoken liturgy and the Psalm chanted in a minor key. I sense I am getting closer. I am seeing more of the world in a more-whole way, which gives me hope that I will see more of the world –including myself and others– in a holy way.

As Gerard Manley Hopkins reminds us, “Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, To the Father through the features of men’s faces.” [Hopkins: As Kingfishers Catch Fire]

So often Jesus bids us to behold! He invites us to see. We can open the eyes of our hearts to see through love. Willa Cather put this memorably, through the words of Father Vaillant, her slightly fictionalized portrayal of Archbishop Lamy of Santa Fe (in Death Comes for the Archbishop). “The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears hear what is there about us always.”

This is a season to see more clearly, and dearly, what is there about us always.

Toward Beauty

In Art, Faith and Life ~ STEPHEN HOLMGREN