WHAT DO YOU SEEK? Treasures of Religious Life

Following his previous best-seller, Enfolded in Christ: The Inner Life of a Priest, and The Mystery of Faith: Exploring Christian Belief,* this new book explores the wisdom offered to the world by the Religious Life as it has been lived, in particular, by Anglicans.   

(* An interview about the book is available via YouTube)

It is concerned to show the way in which this life has a treasury of basic knowledge concerning human life and how we can live together. The Life has been present, in some form, in the Church from the beginning of Christianity and in the Anglican Communion for almost 200 years, but is frequently overlooked or considered irrelevant yet has helped mould both individual well-being in Christ and the shape and wisdom of the Christian world.

Whilst it uses stories concerning various communities it is not primarily intended to promote the Life, although it was written with a view to help those who may be considering their call. Chapters include: Seeking God and the wisdom of the Desert tradition; The Monastic Way and Contemplative Living; For the Sake of the Kingdom, offering insights into the way the Life responded to growing social needs; Habits and Hearts, looking at the way we express what lies most deeply within us; Priests and Prophets, reflecting on how the Life might inform both the ordained and those seeking to live prophetically, and The Hidden Monk, exploring the way the ‘monk’ (nun) lies in the depths of us all.

                                                      ___________________________

From the Foreword by the Bishop of Manchester

‘Perhaps this book should be required reading for all presenting themselves to their Vocations Team or priest, who feel God’s call must, because this is the only model they have ever seen, mean becoming a ‘vicar’. In our pluriform age, consideration of Religious Life should be required of those who seek to help people find their path among today’s array of options.  Above all this is a book for any prepared to acknowledge that what they are seeking is not merely to better themselves, who acknowledge that the small voice from within will be quietened neither by enthusiastic activity nor internal contemplation, but by recognising that this call comes from beyond. The one we are seeking is God, and we seek because God has already sought us.’ 

COMMENDATIONS

At a time when so many are looking for ways to live a meaningful and authentic Christian life, this is a timely book. Those who are simply interested in finding ways to incorporate ancient monastic wisdom into their daily lives will find John-Francis’ reflections thought provoking. Those who might consider a monastic vocation for themselves, will find the same questions an aid to their discernment.
Br. James Koester SSJE, Superior, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

John-Francis was my Novice Guardian when I first joined the Society of St. Francis. I learned a lot from him then, and I have learned more since reading this book. He speaks of the Religious Life with great affection and thanksgiving. It has encouraged me to go back to the roots of my vocation, to 're-plant' myself in the love of Christ. May this book inspire many others and raise up vocations to the religious life and all pathways to God.
Br. Nicholas Alan SSF, Guardian, Glasshampton Monastery and co-author of ‘Seeing Differently: Franciscans and Creation’

This is beautiful and accessible book introduces the treasures of the Religious Life through the lens of John-Francis’ varied experience and Anglican practise. Much more than a personal spiritual reflection, the breadth of his encounters and research mean the book is an excellent resource for those unfamiliar with the religious life and in particular how this has been expressed in the Anglican tradition. For those of us who have been exposed a little in religious life circles in the UK there is much delight in the collected quotes of so many familiar sisters and brothers. For those seekers coming afresh, encountering an unfamiliar world, John-Francis is an excellent guide.
The Rev. Simon Lewis, Dean of the Community of St. Anselm, Lambeth Palace

Over the centuries monasticism existed seamlessly alongside society, with many points of connection. That changed with the dissolution of the monasteries in England under King Henry VIII but with monasticism's re-establishment in the Church of England in the nineteenth century Christian men and women were once again able to hear God's call to enter the monastery while those who were not called could come alongside monastic communities for spiritual benefit. John-Francis Friendship has not only lived in a Franciscan community but has also drunk from monasticism's spiritual well for decades. His insights are fully monastic while also easily applicable to all Christians. This book is not only an excellent primer on monasticism but a rich treasury of monastic wisdom that will strengthen all readers in their single-minded pursuit of God.
The Rev. Dr. Greg Peters (Visiting Scholar, Von Hügel Institute , St. Edmund's College , University of Cambridge and author of ‘The Monkhood of All Believers)

To enter this book is to find oneself in another world soaked by the presence of God; it is to realise that all life, communal and individual, and indeed the natural world around, participates in a greater reality of love and there finds meaning and purpose. In a time of global pandemic, the ancient way chosen by Religious in answer to the deep question ‘What Do You Seek?’ is more relevant than ever, and I firmly predict we shall see a renaissance in vocations to the religious life in coming times. John-Francis Friendship brings all his experience and wisdom to open up the rich hinterland of the religious orders that have contributed so much to church and society in this beautifully written book which will inform and inspire in equal measure.
The Very Rev. Dr Frances E F Ward, former Dean of St Edmundsbury, parish priest, theologian and writer.

IS RELIGIOUS LIFE DEAD?

Following a recent Zoom meeting of an Anglican bishop with a society of priests to which I belong, I’ve been ruminating on his critical comments concerning the state of Religious Life in the Church of England.

Whilst it’s clear that many of the traditional Orders are a shadow of their former selves and some have died or will soon come to an end, that is not true of all. First Order Franciscans have a number of novices and the Third Order is flourishing (yes, it’s a recognised Order); the Benedictines at Mucknall have been slowly growing over a number of years and a few others (the Sisters of Bethany, Tymawr and Wantage) all have novices, as does Mirfield. Not in the numbers they once had, but there is plenty of life in those communities.

The re-establishment of Religious Life in the Church of England was considered by many as the crowning glory of the 19th century Catholic Revival. It was catholic clergy from Fr. Benson SSJE to Fr. Robert Grafton CSWG who heard that call to consecrate their lives through Religious Vows and Anglo-Catholic clergy who assisted many women in particular to consider their own call. All that was done against the background of a church which was often disinterested and sometimes hostile to that ‘romish’ development – a disinterest that seems to be growing. During research for my new book ‘What Do You Seek; Treasures of Religious Life’, I have encountered young women who were actively discouraged from considering such a Life by their DDO’s and told that they needed to be priests. Others had no idea there were Religious in the C of E and had been looking to Rome.

One of the marks of true Catholicism has always been that it sees the need, value and benefit of those consecrated to God under Religious Vows. To forget or ignore that not only diminishes the possibility of vocations to that Life but also denies it the support and encouragement it needs and diminishes the catholic nature of the Church. Whilst I regret being called to leave SSF I also believe it ought to be one of the marks of a truly catholic society such as SMMS to actively pray for, encourage and support vocations to Religious Life. We ought to be involved with Orders, especially those such as SLG who have a commitment to pray for clergy; to be using those monasteries and convents which still exist both for our own needs and the benefit of our parishes and institutions – Hilfield Friary, for example, welcomed hundreds of parish, educational and military groups whilst I was there.

Numbers of younger people are also often not found in the church, but I have encountered some on visiting communities because they find there a depth of spirituality they don’t find in their local churches. Might it be one of the distinctive marks of the Sodality that we picked up the baton of praying for, encouraging vocations – and to be re-discovering the riches offered by Religious Life?

ANAMNESIS

32nd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (Yr. B)

A Sermon preached at the Church of All Saints, New Eltham on

SUNDAY, 11^th NOVEMBER, 2012 

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

*   *   *

Remember me when I am gone away

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned;

Only remember me: you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve;

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than you should remember and be sad.

INTRODUCTION

So wrote the 19th cent poet, Christina Rossetti.  Memory is one of our most important and cherished faculties.  The loss of ability to remember, or ignoring the past, can so easily be a cause of pain - and danger.  “Mem'ries,” sang Barbra Steisand,

“may be beautiful and yet

What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember...
The way we were...”

Memories can cause pain, especially if they recall past hurts.  Events from long, long ago, can exert immense influence on the present for the past has the power to control life now.  But our memories can trick on us.  Over time they can become selective; particular past events haunt us in a way that can continue to cause pain. 

Memories of teenagers causing havoc to the extent the doors of my old church being locked when services began continued to haunt my some of previous congregation for many years long after the problem had passed.  Memories of communal violence have led to endless cycles of war: the ethnic cleansing that went on in the Serbian region of Kosovo was the direct result of the living memory of Ottoman atrocities in the 14th cent.

Personally we are all affected by our memories – sometimes for good but at times creating a sense of fear or leaving us with buried hurts and anger.  Such can be the extent of this that, unless addressed, the lives of some are blighted.  We all need to notice what we tend to hold as a living memory and the effect that has on the way we live now.  Do the memories we cherish enable us to live with greater freedom and joy, or do they have the opposite effect?   Too often memories haunt us and disable us and It’s for that reason that one of the most important of the Healing Ministries is that known as the ‘Healing of Memories’.  Memories of past hurts need to be addressed and the maelstrom of unresolved memories connected with child abuse remind us of the devastating effect that such memories can have unless they are properly addressed and dealt with.

REMEMBERING and the EUCHARIST

Today we particularly remember those who have died in two World Wars and those who have been killed in the many wars and uprisings that have blighted our world since then.  And we do this in the context of the Eucharist.  Week by week, and in many places day by day, it is the same.  The Eucharist is what we celebrate because it is what Jesus told us to do “in remembrance of me”.  But the actual word Jesus is recorded to have used, “anamnesis”, means much more than simply recalling a past event.  The word carries an understanding that, in ‘doing this’ the past becomes present.  We, literally if you like, re-member; bring the scattered members back into one.

Most of us will know that the Eucharist developed out from the Jewish Passover meal: that celebration of the liberation of Israel from their slavery in Egypt through what has become known as the Exodus.   That yearly ritual, mirrored in the weekly Sabbath meal, celebrated for more than three thousand years, has become rooted in the psyche of not only the Jewish people but also provides hope for all who sense they are oppressed and long for their liberation.  As one Jewish thinker has written: ‘Moses, …is writ large on the heart of our people from generation to generation and whose influence on our national life has not ceased from ancient times to now.  … (E)ven if you managed to demonstrate …  that Moses … never lived, … , this would not diminish by one iota the historical reality of the Moses ideal – the one who led us not only forty years through the Sinai desert, but thousands of years, through every the desert we have crossed from the Exodus from Egypt to the present.’
(‘Moses’ by Ahad Ha'Am)

So in celebrating the Eucharist week by week – and, indeed, day by day for our Faith in this remembrance must be recalled in our everyday lives – we are affirming our belief that there is a path to life along which we can be led.  Then one movement that matters is from whatever enslaves us to freedom.  Such freedom can only be gained at a price and many of us are not willing to travel that way towards liberation.  Instead, we are trapped by memories that haunt us and hold us in a life that is controlled by the past.

And so the importance of constantly ‘doing this’, of celebrating this Eucharist, of constantly re-enacting this event, is to enable us to make present the memory of the whole of the dynamic.  Not just the Passion and the Suffering and the Death but also the rising to new life through it all.  By making this offering central to what it means to be a Christian we seek to avoid choosing only those memories which don’t challenge us to move through the pain of the past into our own place of freedom, our Promised Land.  For, as Barbra Steisand sang: “Mem'ries may be beautiful and yet What's too painful to remember We simply choose to forget.”

CONCLUSION

Some years ago I was fortunate in being invited to attend a wedding in a remote village in Upper Egypt.  As part of the street celebrations, in which the whole community joined, there appeared the story-teller, that ancient craftsman whose task is to rehearse the story of the people from generation to generation lest the memory fade.  The communal memory was enlivened and the past made present so that the people knew the story that made them who they were.  That’s why we read the scriptures – to remember the story that enabled a faith and has inspired individuals, cultures and civilisations.  A story out of which the saints live and out of which we find our identity.  We are a people for whom suffering, passion and death is not an end but a movement into life.  And, if we want our faith to grow – if we want it to become part of who we are and how we approach life and not just something we do for an hour on Sunday – there needs to come a time when we claim this communal memory as our own. 

Today’s Eucharist, like every Eucharist, proclaims the memory of an event that continues to inspire.  Not the pious recalling of a long-ago event, but the living affirmation that God seeks to bring us to wholeness.  That is our Faith, a faith that has sustained the Jewish people through centuries of oppression and which has inspired Christians since the day Jesus said, “Do this is remembrance of me”.  The faith that, in spite of suffering and death, God will lead us through if we trust in his love.  “Jesus did not instruct us to repeat the Passover meal,… .  He instructed us to enter into his ‘hour.’ … (the) “hour in which love triumphs” and that we share his hour if we “allow ourselves, through the celebration of the Eucharist, to be drawn into that process of transformation that the Lord intends to bring about.” (Pope Benedict: World Youth Assembly. Cologne.  2005)

To remember the past is, we hope, to learn from it for, as one writer has said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  On this Remembrance Sunday, as we call to mind the sacrifices of women and men and in the face of continual violence around the world, we not only recall the tragedies that led to so many deaths, nor simply recall their lives and our loses.  Rather we are invited to remember the past “allow(ing) ourselves, through the celebration of the Eucharist, to be drawn into that process of transformation that the Lord intends to bring about.” 

Amen

Winchester adds fuel to flames !

So +Michael Scott-Joynt has added his comments in an article in this weeks Church of England Newspaper. It is, of course, a free country and, thankfully, he can say what he likes (though I gather +Rowan has complained about the liberal 'chattering classes').

His statement, following +Tom Wright of Durham, has made me realise that, because of the way they come to their authority as bishops, they can speak for no one but themselves. We didn't choose them - the People of God did not elect them - so who do they represent? The power they have is that of position and influence: I wish I might say their charism, but that would require their appointment to be by a process of discernment by the Church. Whatever +Michael and +Tom say about the Episcopal Church, at least their bishops speak with the authority of the People of God who elected them.

I have come to sense that the Church of England is still a feudal fiefdom of the bishops. I wonder when +Michael listened to the voice of gay and lesbian Christians? My experience of him is that he has never truly 'listened' for his mind has been made up on the subject for many, many years. No theological arguments (or imaginative insights) can touch him, I regret. His voice, as always, only speaks for what he regards as 'orthodox Christianity'.

Who was it said, "There's none so blind as those who will not see" ...

Cost of Conscience

Recently I read the Archbishop of Canterbury's statement concerning the issue of conscience in relation to the law. It arose from the plea of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster for the RC Church to have their adoption agencies excluded from The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations - SOR - which would 'outlaw discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of sexual orientation' on the grounds that the SORs would "oblige our agencies in law to consider adoption applications from homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents would require them to act against the principles of Catholic teaching."

Archbishop Rowna has stated that he "would like to see some more serious debate now about that particular question – what are the limits, if there are limits, to the State’s power to control and determine the actions of voluntary bodies within it, in pursuit of what are quite proper goals of non-discrimination."

Quite apart from the fact that it has been pointed out that the RC adoption agencies already place children in homes that hardly reflect 'the principles of Catholic teaching' I am intrigued that our own Archbishop (of Canterbury) has chosen to step in to support the Cardinal. Whilst not a devotee of The Thirtynine Arctiles (often quoted by traditionalists to attack others), I note that Article XXXVII Of the Civil Magistrates unambiguously states that 'The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.'

Now, whilst Archbishop Rowan has nailed his comments to the issue of 'conscience' ("The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning." - initial letter to the Prime Minister), it has been pointed out that the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster is, ultimately, under the authority of Rome. His hands, in a sense, are tied. However, we had a Reformation to deal with just this matter and I find it intriguing that this smallpiece of our history, which has shaoped the development of England, seems to have been forgotten. As Article XXXVII states in its opening lines:

'The King's Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign Jurisdiction.'

Can conscience be above the Law unless those laws are unjust? I guess this is the argument - whether equality for all under the Law can be superceded by justice for those who wish to - or have to - uphold discrimination.

The Bishop of Durham seems to have exploded, and what a mess! Here's what he said today about the matter of gay adoptions, equality and the church:

“This completely fails to take into account the views and beliefs of all those involved. The idea that new Labour — which has got every second thing wrong and is back-tracking on extended drinking hours, is in a mess over this cash-for-peerages business, cannot keep all its prisons under control — the idea that new Labour can come up with a new morality which it forces on the Catholic Church after 2,000 years; I am sorry, this is amazing arrogance on the part of the Government.”

Ummmmm ... excuse me but our elected, democratic Government (and, yes, it may have been elected by less than 50% of the population, but that's how democracy works in our society) has proposed that those dealing with the adoption of children must accept a particular piece of legislation. If this is passed by Parliament (not the State, which is another concept) then it will become Law. Isn't that how we do things in our country?

The Law will not affect the 'views and beliefs' of the church - except to say that discrimination is against the Law. Clearly Bp. Wright thinks the church should be allowed to discriminate. Oh dear. It saddens me that someone like him should have spoken before thinking. It seems perfectly right to me that where religion seeks to play a part in society it must, surely, acknowledge, as part of that society, the Law.

If the church (which one?) were granted an exemption from Equality legislation (and I understand this to be the point) then any religious group could claim exemption for some aspect of it's teaching (not belief) and continue to excercise discrimination.

And then we'd really be up s*** creek.

On another note, I listened to 'Today' and noticed a subtle (?) change in the Cardinal's stance when he said to the interviewer that the real reason why the RC Church objected to the proposals was that it believed in the necessity of children being brought up in a fmaily where there is a father and a mother? Or did I dream that is what he said?