From the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion
Lent 2008
Lent is a time for silence in the presence of God. It is a time for stilling our bodies, so that our souls may be allowed to flourish. It is a time for stark assessment of our position with God. It is time for our inner life, the life of the soul, to be nourished. When we truly fast, our bodies are diminished and our souls are transformed.
Just as partners in marriage cannot take stock of themselves without taking stock of their relationship, so Christians cannot take stock of their inner lives without also taking stock of their life in the Church.
This is a unique Lent for the Traditional Anglican Communion.
Last October, our bishops and vicars-general signed a letter to the Holy See. This letter was the culmination of seventeen years of patient work, that began with a conversation in the Vatican between Archbishop Pierre Duprey and a small group of Traditional Anglican Communion clergy led by our first Primate, Archbishop Louis Falk. We were asked then “to show that we could grow, to develop strong relationships with local catholic churches, and above all not to needlessly expand the episcopate”. The current letter is in part a report on our acceptance of these requests. It seeks the guidance of the Holy See as to how we can fulfil our desire for healing the brokenness in that part of the Church for which we hold responsibility. It gives assurances about the faith that we as a College of Bishops “desire to hold and teach”.
In all this time, we have learned ever more deeply the fullness of faith in Jesus Christ. We have been inspired and shamed, as communities have joined us from places where Christians are only a fragment of the population, and from other places where persecution and starvation are the daily experience of our people.
This Lent, we are waiting in a prayer-filled quietness for the answer to our quest for unity. The quietness was requested of us. Lent is the right time to be waiting. Unity was the demand of Jesus just before his crucifixion. Unity filled his thoughts at his last moments with his apostles. Unity was the subject of his final prayer to his Father in their presence. It took ruthless campaigns to fracture the Church. It will take toughness and humility, and an openness to a Spirit (who makes soft what has become unbendable) to become again “one, as the Father and I are one”.
After Lent comes the majesty of Resurrection. And between Lent and Resurrection is the agony of Crucifixion. In the daily battle between our selfishness and the greatness to which God calls us, it is God who has set the standard. “Obedience, even to death on the Cross.”
Let us keep this Lent well. Let us pray each day for Benedict, Bishop of Rome, who over many years has strengthened us by his concern for our plight, and for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to whom our call for an Anglican Catholic future has been addressed. Let us be generous in our prayers for other Anglicans who have determined to walk apart from error, and those who are trapped in places where faith is diminished and distorted.
And above all, remember the prayer that has come from that Paschal meal in an upper room in Jerusalem so long ago: “Father, may they be one!”
+John Hepworth
