Romans 8:16-18.

THE Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

“I shall lift you up on high to the Jerusalem that is above, in the kingdom of heaven.”

WHEN the Lord was going to his voluntary Passion, he said to his Apostles upon the way: ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed, as it is written concerning him’ Jn 20:17. Therefore, let us also, with minds washed clean, go with him, and let us be crucified with him, and die for his sake to the pleasures of life, that we might live together with him, and hear his call: No longer in the earthly Jerusalem, to suffer, but I go to my Father, and your Father, and my God, and your God, Jn 20:17 and I shall lift you up on high to the Jerusalem that is above,Gal 4:26 in the kingdom of heaven.

My translation, from Analogion.

At Vespers for Tuesday in Holy Week, sung on Monday evening.

Galatians 2:20.

I AM crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

THIS present day maketh the sacred Passions dawn like saving lights; for in his goodness Christ maketh speed to suffer, he that holdeth in the hollow of his hand all that is accepteth to be hanged upon a tree, to save man.

Kathisma

THIS present day is robed in the first-fruits of the Passion of the Lord. Come then, ye that love the feast, let us gather together in song; for the Judge cometh to be judged of Pilate, to receive his Cross, his afflictions, and his stripes; whereupon he is also struck upon the cheek by a servant; all this he alloweth, that he might save man. Wherefore we cry out these words: O Christ God, that lovest mankind, grant unto us forgiveness for our failings, who worship thy immaculate Passion.

Katavasia

THOU O Christ hast magnified the Mother of God, who bore thee; from her thou our Fashioner didst put on a body of like passions, our deliverance from the faults of ignorance; and every generation which blesseth her glorifieth thee.

Exaposteilarion

I BEHOLD thy bridechamber, my Saviour, adorned in readiness; and I have no garment, that I might enter therein. Wash bright the raiment of my soul, thou that givest Light, and save me.

Prokeimenon

WHEN the Lord turned the captivity of Sion.
Then was our mouth filled with joy.

My translations, from Analogion

St Bede tells how King Oswiu of Northumbria appointed Wilfrid as Bishop and then, when Wilfrid was a long time travelling abroad, appointed Chad in his place.

Like St Bede, St Wilfrid was an enthusiast of Roman practice, which in some respects was closer to the Byzantine world than St Chad’s Celtic ways. But there was a lot to like in the Celtic tradition of St Patrick and St David, a tradition which had learnt a great deal from the desert fathers of Egypt.

Much as in our own day, England was trying to find a way of being authentically English and authentically Orthodox at the same time, and finding it difficult.

Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (a Greek speaker originally from Tarsus, the birthplace of St Paul) restored St Wilfrid to the See of Northumbria, as was proper.

But he was so impressed with St Chad’s humility in accepting the decision that, when the King of Mercia required a Bishop, Theodore recalled Chad from his monastery in Lastingham, and appointed him to the no less important See of Mercia.

CHAD, being thus consecrated bishop, began immediately to devote himself to ecclesiastical truth and to chastity; to apply himself to humility, continence, and study; to travel about, not on horseback, but after the manner of the apostles, on foot, to preach the Gospel in towns, the open country, cottages, villages, and castles; for he was one of the disciples of Aidan, and endeavored to instruct his people, by the same actions and behavior, according to his and his brother Cedd’s example.

St Bede, Ecclesiastical History Book III.28 (Source).

St Mary's Church, Lastingham, North Yorkshire. It has stood on or near the site of St Chad's own monastery since Norman times. © Philip Barker (Geograph). Licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence. Click for original.

THOU didst put to sleep the lusts of the passions, [O Chad], for thou didst take hold of night-long vigils, obedience, and humility, and the study of the divine Scriptures, and also a pure heart and an untroubled heart’s eye1; whence thou hast become even a vessel of the holy Spirit, and thou sendest the lightning flashes of thy miracles unto the ends of the earth.

This prayer is given in the liturgy for November 26, the feast of St Akakios of Sinai. St Akakios is praised by St John Climacus as a supreme example of humility. See “The obedience of St Akakios of Sinai” at Mystagogy.

1 Greek νοῦς.

My translation, from Analogion.

The 11th century chronciler Rhygyvarch tells how St Patrick (whose feast day falls later this month) hoped to centre his ministry in Wales, but was forestalled by an angel.

HE came to the country of the people of Ceredigion, wherein he sojourned a little while. He enters Demetica rura, the country of Dyved, and there wandering about arrived at length at the place which was named Vallis Rosina; and perceiving that the place was pleasant, he vowed to serve God faithfully there.

But when he was revolving these things in his mind, an angel of the Lord appeared to him. “God,” said he, “hath not disposed this place for thee, but for a son who is not yet born, nor will he be born until thirty years are past.”

Rhygyvarch’s “Life of David” §3, tr. Arthur Wade-Evans.

This son as yet unborn was David. He rose from being Abbot of a small monastery to being a much-loved Bishop and a tireless monastic founder in Wales. According to Rhygyvarch and others, David’s consecration as a Bishop was even performed in Jerusalem by the Patriarch under divine guidance.

On returning to Wales he was acclaimed by the Synod of Llanddewi Brefi as their spokesman for a Welsh revival.

“We beseech thee that by his intercession, whose memory we celebrate, we may come to the eternal joys.” An icon of St David of Wales.

GOD, who didst fortell thy blessed confessor and pontiff, David, by the announcement of an angel to Patrick, prophesying thirty years before he was born, we beseech thee that by his intercession, whose memory we celebrate, we may come to the eternal joys, through [thy Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen].

Collect for St David’s Day, given in Arthur Wade-Evans’s translation for Rhygyvarch’s “Life of David”.

Based on a book which has received widespread excoriation for its inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims, the film has naturally outraged the former Governor of Alaska’s many supporters.

Mrs Palin’s own succinct response (which alludes to President Obama’s 2007 campaign slogan, ‘change we can believe in’) is below.

Sarah Palin: Game Change We Can Believe In

But the Adam Smith Institute blog reports that the Indian government is excluding hundreds of low cost (as little as £4 per month) private schools from its education statistics, as if such schools did not exist.

RECENT research carried out by the India Institute and Newcastle University’s E.G. West Centre in the Indian city of Patna has produced some remarkable findings.

The report, The Private School Revolution In Bihar, India, launched this week in New Delhi, and shows that government statistics are currently excluding three quarters of the schools in the city and 68% of school children. [...]

[I]F these findings reflect the real state of education across India and developing world, then the so called ‘global education crisis’ is much less of a crisis than previously thought.

Instead, the widespread under-reporting of the number of children in school may now be a deliberate policy of developing country governments to help attract more international aid.

Read the whole article»

St David's Cathedral, St David's, Pembrokeshire, which stands on the site of St David's own 6th century monastery. © Pauline Eccles (Geograph). Licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence.

TODAY is the feast of St David of Wales (ca. 512-587), known in Welsh as Dewi Sant.

St David’s Manner of Life.

THE father himself pouring forth fountains of tears daily, irradiating with censed holocausts of prayers, and blazing with a double flame of charity, consecrated with pure hands the due oblation of the Lord’s Body, and thus after matins proceeded alone to angelic discourse.

After this he immediately used to seek cold water, in which by lingering a long while wet he subdued every heat of the flesh.

Afterwards he was wont to spend the whole day, unshaken and unwearied, in teaching, praying, and genuflecting, in care for the brethren, and also in feeding a multitude of the bereft, orphans, widows, the needy, the weak, the infirm, and pilgrims.

So he began, continued, and ended.

As for the rest of his severe living, although necessary for imitation, the intended shortness of this little work forbids us to set it forth.

But imitating the Egyptian monks he led a life similar to theirs.

From Rhygyvarch’s “Life of David” (c. 1090), tr. Arthur Wade-Evans (1944).

A painting of Christina Rossetti by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

WEARIED of sinning, wearied of repentance,
Wearied of self, I turn, my God, to Thee;
To Thee, my Judge, on Whose all-righteous sentence
Hangs mine eternity:
I turn to Thee, I plead Thyself with Thee,—
Be pitiful to me.

Wearied I loathe myself, I loathe my sinning,
My stains, my festering sores, my misery:
Thou the Beginning, Thou ere my beginning
Didst see and didst foresee
Me miserable, me sinful, ruined me,—
I plead Thyself with Thee.

I plead Thyself with Thee Who art my Maker,
Regard Thy handiwork that cries to Thee;
I plead Thyself with Thee Who wast partaker
Of mine infirmity;
Love made Thee what Thou art, the love of me,—
I plead Thyself with Thee.

Christina Rossetti.

Canon of the Saint, by Joseph. Ode 6.

DEEP in the abyss of my failings, I call upon the unsearchable abyss of Thy tenderhearted pity: O God, bring me up out of corruption.

THOU didst journey upon the narrow way, father, and shew it to all men by thy words; and treading the same well, they shall come unto the wide place of Paradise.

“Thou didst journey upon the narrow way, father, and shew it to all men by thy words”. A road near Llandegveth, Monmouthshire. © Philip Halling (Geograph). Licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence. Click for original.

THY life became an holy thing, Cassian our father, and fellow of the holy angels; and thy death was happiness and honour.

Thou didst cast off the slumber of negligence, and watchful in deed and contemplation thou livedst like an angel upon the earth, O God-bearer, and truly happy man.

At Matins on the Feast of Righteous John Cassian the Confessor (+ c. 433).

My translation, from Analogion. His feast is celebrated on February 29th in leap years, or otherwise on the 28th.

Boughton House, Weekley, Northants. © John Stolarski (Geograph). Licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons licence. Click for original.

AUSTEN celebrates and promotes a solidly middle-class propriety, and this together with her use of narrative (and being a woman?), may explain Austen’s neglect by academic moral philosophers.

Success for Austen’s women depends on developing a moral character whose central virtues are bourgeois: prudence (planning one’s actions with respect to protecting and furthering one’s interests), amiability (civility to family, friends, and strangers, according to their due), propriety (understanding and acting on a sense of what virtue requires), and dignity (considering oneself as an independent autonomous person deserving of respect).

Austen is particularly unusual (feminist?) among virtue ethicists past and present in according amiability so much importance, even though it is so obviously central to most people’s lives working, if not living, in close confinement with others with whom one must and should get along.

Austen presents these virtues as not merely a necessary accommodation to difficult circumstances, but as superior to the invidious vanity and pride of the rich and titled, which she often mocks.

So Elizabeth Bennet rejects Darcy’s haughty condescension out of hand; the happy ending must wait until Darcy comes to see beyond her lowly connections and unaristocratic manners and fully recognise her true (bourgeois) virtue (PP).

That is a moral happy ending even more than it is a romantic one.

Read the whole article»

Thomas Rodham, “Reading Jane Austen as a moral philosopher” (at The Philosopher’s Beard blog).