It is pure gift to be able to take a full week as a retreat time, and particularly so when that week can be spent at a place like Collegeville.  This is the first of a series of reflections I’ll be offering from my time at the Collegeville Institute at St John’s Abbey, in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Jamie Howison

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fter a relatively uneventful – though admittedly rather long – twelve hour bus trip, I arrived here in Collegeville last night at about 8:30pm.  Now, in case you had images of some austere monastic cell in mind, let me first tell you about where I am staying.

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This past Sunday in our liturgy we celebrated baptism… and something called confirmation.  Given that the vast majority of our community comes from traditions other than Anglicanism – and most from non-liturgical and non-sacramental free church kinds of places – I thought it might be useful to back up and offer a bit of a reflection on this confirmation business.

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hen I was doing my theological studies at Trinity College in Toronto, our worship and liturgy professor once referred to confirmation as being “a rite in search of a theology.”  While maybe not the most positive of characterizations, there is actually a good deal of truth in his remark.

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A CBC concert with a saint ben’s connection

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ou really need to take the time to listen to the Steve Bell Devotion “concert on demand” on the CBC website.   Not only does it include several of the songs Gord Johnson wrote in the context of the saint ben’s liturgical life, but there is also one by Byron O’Donnell and  a great guest appearance by Kerri Woelke, both of whom have strong saint ben’s connections.  Oh, and the wonderful photograph shown above was taken by Tim Plett.

The concert was recorded in Winnipeg at Grant Memorial Baptist Church, at the end of Steve’s Devotion tour.

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ear Jesus, the story of Easter continues. It has been a week since we met in this place to celebrate your victory over death. In that week, we have seen transition in the earth – moving from the darkness of winter to the promise of spring.   Resurrect in us that same amazement and renewed awareness of your living presence in our lives.
Let us pray to the Lord;  Hear us Lord of glory.

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A Sermon Preached at the Baptism of Molly Robertson

On April 26, we’ll be celebrating baptisms at saint benedict’s table.  A couple of adults will be baptized, and several others will be confirmed and/or renew their baptismal vows.  We’ll also be baptizing an infant, which will cause at least some folks to pause and wonder what that is all about.   How it is that we can proclaim words which confess the faith and pronounce regeneration over the life of a baby or young child, who clearly has no idea as to what is going on?  The following is a sermon preached at the baptism of my niece, in which I hopefully manage to set out some framework for understanding how this tradition has made sense of this action.  I should, however, add that in fact adult baptism remains the defining norm in this tradition, and it is only in light of the adult rite that the baptism of a young child of baptized Christian parents can even begin to make sense.

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want to offer something by way of an interpretative word regarding this thing that we have just done; celebrated and administered the sacrament of baptism, and thus, as the Book of Common Prayer phrases it, received Molly “into Christ’s holy Church, (making her) a living member of the same.”  In some real sense, it could be argued that we have, in the words of that liturgy, said all that needs to be said.  In those extraordinarily rich and powerful words there is already a fully articulated baptismal theology, and that to suggest that I need to say more is to imply that I can somehow go Thomas Cranmer one better.  I make no such claim.  Yet in a community in which this action and these words are so familiar, it is useful to sometimes dig in a bit deeper, and remind ourselves of just how potently subversive is this act of baptizing an infant or young child.

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Church, Commentary | 2 Comments »

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lleluia!  Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

This year at our celebration of the Resurrection we read the account provided in the Gospel according to Mark.  Mark’s version is strikingly brief, even stark, such that it seems hardly the great happy ending one might expect… and in fact, it is not so much an ending as it is an invititation to a new beginning.

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call the community into a time of prayer.

As this morning announces the most unimaginable gift of grace and love through the resurrection of your son, the first fruit of all of humanity, we can do nothing but thank and praise you. We cannot earn, we cannot buy, we cannot persuade, all we are capable of is accepting. Our gratitude and songs of adoration are brought to you in broken vessels, we ask you to receive all that we bring.
Lord in your mercy…

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a short story for the end of Holy Week

I wrote this as a reflection as I pass through my time of Lent, and look ahead to Eastertide when I will reaffirm my baptismal vows. It is a reflection on the Book of Mark. Jesus preached to incredulous and unbelieving people, teachers of the Law, Gentiles, and disciples alike, & the undertones of Jesus’ frustration at their lack of faith and understanding is written in Mark’s short yet deep account of the life and teachings of Christ, bringing us all the way to the Resurrection, an end of which leaves more of a question than an answer…

Suzanne Pringle

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am standing at a precipice. I realize that this will be the ultimate cliché, but perhaps I dream in cliché, and my life is a cliché, as though Douglas Coupland were sitting behind his laptop conceiving of a new dark comedy into which he will cast me as the protagonist, hurling me headlong and haplessly into a new charade from which I will need to disentangle myself…

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a sermon preached on Good Friday, 2009

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want you to hear this story as if for the first time.  And I want you to hear it as Mark dares to tell it.  In Mark’s telling, from the time Jesus falls silent before Pilate until he finally succumbs to death, he says but one thing:  Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani.  Tragically, even that one final powerful statement is misunderstood by some of the bystanders:  “Listen,” they say, “He is calling for Elijah!”

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ideaExchange | Outside the cloister walls

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n her recent book Flirting with Monasticism, Karen Sloan writes “Not everyone is called to the monastic life, but many of us would be blessed if we were able to live more monastically.” This is a question of particular significance for a church community that bears the name of Benedict, one of the key founders of monastic life.

Kara Mandryk holds a Doctorate in Worship Studies and is Assistant Professor of Worship and Christian Spirituality at Providence College. At ideaExchange in early March, Kara spoke to those of us who won’t be taking up vows but who still wonder if we can reframe and adopt the three primary monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in an effort to live more monastically?

There are three ways to hear this ideaExchange presentation (runs 1:01:24) and the question period that followed:

• click on the arrow below
• use the podcast widget in the left sidebar
• click here to download the episode from iTunes

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