The leader of the Orthodox Church in North America has re-kindled the oldest ecumenical relationship in Christian history. Addressing delegates and attendees of the inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah, said, “I am seeking an ecumenical restoration by being here today. This is God’s call to us.” This significant gesture represents the possibility of full communion being exchanged between the churches.
Metropolitan Jonah represents the North American branch of the Orthodox Church, a Christian denomination that has a long history of strong relationships with the Anglican Church. “We have to actualize that radical experience of union in Christ with one another,” Jonah said. Speaking for 45 minutes, the Metropolitan addressed the importance of looking past our differences in order to work together for mission. “Our unity transcends our particularity,” he said.
His Beatitude’s message was focused on unity but did not fail to address areas of contrasting beliefs between the two churches. Despite this, the Metropolitan told the audience that “our arms are open wide.”
Following the speech, a representative of an Orthodox seminary, St. Vladimir’s, announced a cooperative effort with Nashotah House, an orthodox Anglican seminary, that would help further these ecumenical relationships and what Jonah described as a “new dialogue between the Orthodox Church in North America and the new Anglican province in North America.
The Texas chapter of the Missionaries of St John, together with their bishop, gathered in Bedford, Texas, heartily rejoice and offer God thanksgiving for this timely address by Metropolitan Jonah and his "open arms" of invitation. Our hearts resonate with his call to the truth of the apostolic faith, and we humbly and joyfully embrace his call to unity in the "faith once given". Lord, hear our prayer.
Those who have been forgiven much, love much. Those in recovery, some of whom are ex-felons, struggle with guilt and shame. The Gospel of Christ offers love, forgiveness and true freedom. Divine Mercy Mission has been providing pastoral care to those in recovery for over 2 1/2 years.
We embark on a mission for the Kingdom of God. Following the Lord's call, we embark on a new work in the intercity of Cleveland, Ohio, in a historic neighborhood called Slavic Village. Over the years it has experienced decline and a transformation from a former vibrant neighborhood of ethnic European steelworkers. The Village is now a multi-racial community experiencing the worst of our current economic depression. It is reported that one in six homes are in foreclosure. Drug houses are flourishing, as is other activity that coincides with drug abuse. I am quite familiar with the Village. It is an area in which I minister at six local recovery centers. Divine Mercy Anglican Mission hopes to be an anchor, a spiritual center that reaches out to those in recovery and the community at large.
Pictured is our new facility, on which we hope to have new signage soon. We ask your prayers and we covet your help as we began just this past week on Pentecost Sunday. It seemed very fitting.
By His Mercy, to His Glory
Fr. Nathanael Dean Maurer MSJ, Divine Mercy Anglican Mission 440.951.2183
There's something new and wonderful about to happen at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in West Liberty, Kentucky! My name is Father Todd Boyce, and I have the privilege to serve as Institutional Chaplain at EKCC. We have over 1,700 inmates, nearly 400 staff members, and two Chaplains! I'm a busy man, but I love what I'm doing. In the course of any given week I counsel upwards of 15 to 20 men in my office or in their dorm, I notify between 4 and 6 men of family emergencies/deaths, I interact with nearly 25 volunteers, and pray continually about how God's love can be manifested more clearly in this place.
Each time I counsel with an Inmate I'm required to look at his background and know what he's done. I don't mind telling you that there are many times I didn't have to do that. Yet, in spite of it and/or because of it, God's love for us is made more clear to me each time. I have felt, over the past 6 months, that something more is needed in this place for the men to grab hold of than what's currently offered. Now, please don't misunderstand me. We have the most wonderful volunteers working with us. They bring unfailingly bring the men the message of God's salvation in Jesus Christ. But something more is needed.
The men here need, once they have made the decision to surrender themselves to Jesus, the ongoing opportunity to offer themselves to Jesus. That is, they need worship; worship that calls them to sacrificially give of themselves and to join themselves to perfect sacrifice of Jesus. In short, they need the Mass. They need to learn what, for many of them, they were never taught as they grew up: The value of self-giving. What is implicitly understood by you and I - namely, that all our giving begins and ends in Jesus - is a forgeign concept to them. As it stand right now, their only understanding of worship is entertainment. The Fellowship of Saint Joseph Behind-the-Walls, an outreach ministry of MSJ, aims to change that. By your prayers and the intercession of our Patron, Saint Joseph, we hope to provide growth for our men through worship; specifically, through the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Please remember to pray for The Fellowship of Saint Joseph Behind-the-Walls! Pray for us as we seek to follow his example of patient teaching and self-denial! God bless each of you!
Father Todd Boyce, MSJ
Consecration of Oil For Unction (anointing the sick)
O Lord, holy Father, giver of health and salvation: Send your Holy Spirit to sanctify this oil; that, as your holy apostles anointed many that were sick and healed them, so may those who in faith and repentance receive this holy unction be made whole; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen
Consecration of the Chrism
Eternal Father, whose blessed Son was anointed by the
Holy Spirit to be the Savior and servant of all, we pray you to
consecrate this oil, that those who are sealed with it may
share in the royal priesthood of Jesus Christ; who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.
St Luke the Physician parish is located in Tyler, Texas. Pictured above, far left, is Fr. Rusty Matheny, rector and Fr. Bill Simpson, vicar of Church of the Holy Spirit, the two newest parishes to join the Missionary Society of St John.
Meeting for a time of prayer, conversation and encouragement, MSJ representatives from Florida and Texas will be holding a cluster meeting in Ft. Worth. Addressing the cluster, on Saturday morning, March 14th, will be special guest, Bishop Jack L. Iker. We are so pleased that Bishop Iker would give us this time from his schedule. 
It Isn't Easy Being Anglican
At the heart of the various difficulties in embracing the Anglican world is the brokenness of Anglicanism itself. While this church is as historic as any, more prolific than most and wonderfully rich in its liturgy, it is today a broken church. Once merely the church of the British Isles, the empire took this way of faith around the world. The Anglican way grew to be a large body of Christians second only to Rome and Orthodoxy.
Even today, Christians of the Anglican faith are on the front lines geographically in the global south. Every day, Anglicans spread the Gospel, form parishes, teach the faith, and make converts of unbelievers. In a few short years, the number of Anglican Christians in Nigeria, the Sudan, Congo, Indonesia and many other places have swelled to be counted in the tens of millions. It may be said with integrity that Anglicans are taking a back seat to no other Christian tradition in spreading the faith of Jesus Christ in the 2/3 world. In Latin America, where Anglican Christians had little more than a few scattered chapels just a decade ago, the church is vibrant, robust and growing by leaps and bounds.
Meanwhile, these same vibrant Christians have witnessed the scandal of what passes as Anglican Christianity in the “material west”.
With deep respect I say, Rome has not captured my heart, nor has Orthodoxy taken hold of my soul. But it would be unfair to characterize my own choice as merely one of default, that is, having examined both of the other sisters of apostolic faith and having found myself identifying with the Anglican way solely because I would not or could not choose one of them. I am not Anglican merely because I found myself having to “settle” for some supposed lesser thing.
No, I am orthodox, catholic, but Anglican.
Rome and, to a much lesser degree, Orthodoxy are more magisterial, more hierarchal and appear better equipped to make things “tidy”. The Anglican way is no place for those who cannot live within tensions. It is an impossibly challenging and difficult place for those who desire or need “tidy”. The Anglican way is freer, but it is messy. It just is what it is. Some say that is both the magic and the limp of the Anglican way.
Yet, where would the Christian faith be without her? There would have been no King James Bible, no Book of Common Prayer, and while I won’t flesh out my complete thoughts here, no civilization as we know it in the west. This is my opinion, I grant you, but the Anglican contribution to the western world simply cannot be measured.
The best I can likely do in this broken family, this Anglican Church, is to find a place of honesty and integrity. First, I must recognize how messed up this group is, and this I honestly confess. Secondly, whenever I hear of the difficulties that Romans have or the Orthodox have (or the troubles among the free church Evangelicals, for that matter) nothing in me sees the need to gloat. Humility should always forbid it, but for Anglicans, this is a particularly humbling era.
I choose to walk in the Anglican way because I honestly believe the Lord has led me to walk in this way. I believe He ordered my steps. I know. I know there is a risk in making such a statement. It may appear that I “fix blame” for my love for the Prayer Book on the Lord and dodge my own responsibilities in the matter of my Christian witness.
Yet, I testify that my prayer life finds its home in the Prayer Book the way the swallow finds her home near the altar in Jerusalem. I am Anglican.
There is work to do wherever one finds oneself planted by the Lord in His vineyard. There is pruning to do, weeds to pull, walls to rebuild, marauders to defend against, plants to husband, fruit to grow and a harvest to bring in. Perhaps some vineyards are harder to work than others, this I grant you, but none are the Paradise of God, not yet. This is the cry we hear, even now, emanating from the Eschaton.
Sola Gratia,
+Frederick G. Fick MSJ
February 18. 2009
1. What role will FiFNA take in as the ACNA continues its new existence?
a. As the primary voice for Anglo-Catholic Mission and Renewal, we will need to put into action the means by which we will be a missionary Church. As an ACNA Sub-Province (formerly a Common Cause Partner), we need to implement that missionary strategy and form it to the new governance of the ACNA reflecting our historic expression of the Catholic Faith.
In his essay “Priestesses in the Church?”, C.S. Lewis wrote, “…I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests’ Order. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds…”
Lewis was speaking personally, as obviously he was opposed to the innovation of women in the Order of Priest, but he was also speaking prophetically, as is now apparent. Women priests is an innovation which, like a wedge driven into dry wood, has split the Anglican Communion. As is often the case, one innovation leads to another. This innovation led to the ordination of non-celibate homosexual clergy and to the blessing of same-sex unions in the Anglican Church of Canada and in The Episcopal Church USA. The actions of these churches has led to a fracturing of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Jesus Christ is the fullness of all things in heaven and on earth, both invisible and visible. The Gnostics used “pleroma” to describe the metaphysical unity of all things, but Paul uses the term to speak about how all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ in bodily form (Col. 2:9). This means that the Church can expect no change in Holy Tradition, only the consummation of all things when Christ returns.
The Bible does not say that women can be priests, but the binary distinctions that frame the biblical view of Reality make “woman priest” an ontological impossibility. The Scriptures do not forbid women priests because the very idea of women sacrificing animals in the Temple was beyond imagination. In fact, it would have been regarded as a great affront to the Divine order wherein gender roles and the two bloods were distinguished as binary opposites. C.S. Lewis presents the grotesqueness of women priests in his depiction of the savage slaying of Aslan by the White Witch. If you wonder why the image is so troubling, consider that woman was made to bring forth life, not to take it.
The egalitarianism that prompts clergy to keep talking about women priests is not part of the Biblical worldview. God’s order in creation is exactly that: order. It exists to orient humans to Reality, to keep us from becoming confused and lost. So God has given us the stars and the moon, the planets and the constellations to orient us. God has given us the sunrise in the East and the sun set in the West in orient us. He has given us the Three Witness of the water, the Blood, and the Spirit that we might know the Blessed Trinity.
The Church is not a democracy. No councils, even ecumenical councils, can change God’s order in creation. This is God’s message to Job. Who do we think we are to question what God has established. Were we there when God created the world and all that is in it?
This is but one of three essays on the subject. To read all of this essay and the others, go here