23rd March 2011
In the Midst of Lent: A Reflection
Two of the most powerful Gospel images confront us on the first two Sundays of Lent.
Christ goes into the Wilderness. There, He is tempted by the Devil. This is the Devil Leader of the Satanic force that sought to supplant God in a titanic heavenly struggle among the first and most powerful of God’s creation – the angelic powers.
God created freedom. If we had not been made free, we could not choose to do good. God risked that we might choose to do evil. Firstly among the angels, and then in our own midst, evil has been chosen.
On that high mountain, where Jesus could see every nation and power on earth, He turned his back on the devil.
In Lent we learn again what strength is needed to turn away from the Power of Darkness and Evil.
The allurement of human power, of the promise of lust fulfilled, the rewards held out by the Evil One in his eternal quest to be worshiped as only God can be worshipped, swirl every day around us.
To turn our backs on such power and allurement is tough, very tough. It is the struggle that the drug addict and the alcoholic face day by day. Each moment of our life is a turning moment.
Only when we show the Devil our back do we realise what turning has done. In turning from the Evil One and all his ways, we find suddenly that we are facing God. The Apostles who went up the high mountain with Jesus saw Him transfigured in the company of saints in glory. They had a glimpse of heaven. And in the presence of heaven they collapsed and hid their faces, like children in a thunderstorm.
It is this turning to God, speaking to God, studying the things of God, that makes our Lent.
And in turning with freshness to the God who confronted our evil and our sinfulness on the Cross, we turn the Church, His crucified Body, towards the moment of Resurrection, and the conquering of the Powers of Darkness.
Lent is the darkness before the dawn. Our Lenten prayer and study point us towards the spot where the first rays of dawn light will appear. Lent is for the transforming of our lives, and the transforming of the Church. May it be a good Lent for each of us.
+John Hepworth
27th January 2010
A Pastoral Letter to the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Traditional Anglican Communion
From The Primate, The Most Reverend John Hepworth
“On the Gathering of the Anglicans”
The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus - Read here.
27th January 2010
TAC Bishops’ Letter to the Holy See
The full text of the TAC Bishops’ Letter to the Holy See dated 5th October 2007 concerning their desire for unity with the See of Peter. Read full letter here.
18th January 2010
A Statement from the Primate relating to TAC and Holy See.
Read the Statement here.
28th December 2009
The Octave of Christmas – A Message from His Grace Archbishop John Hepworth.
"The Octave of Christmas is a time of richness and of confrontation. Richness because of the great liturgical and popular tradition that takes us day by day into events and places that deepen our faith in the Christ Child.
The feasts of Stephen, John, Holy Innocents, and the saintly martyr Archbishop Becket, all follow one another in a tumble of carols and remembrance. But these are also days of martyrdom and mass murder.
The Child was laid in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes. These were the clothes in which the Jewish dead would be buried. They were kept in the stable so as not to be within the realm of the living. "His death cast a shadow over His birth, because his death was the reason for His birth."
The martyrs of His octave, the first of the martyrs, Deacon Stephen, the Anglican Archbishop Becket, the host of the Innocents, the children who died for the comfort of a King, the Apostle whose failed martyrdom led to the Apocalyptic exile on Patmos, these are the ones who accompany our Christmas thoughts, and remind us of the cost of following the Child of Bethlehem.
These are appropriate thoughts in this year's Octave when the bishops of our Communion receive their formal response to their petition for communion with the Bishop of Rome and those in communion with him in East and West. To be a splinter is not a virtue, it is an irritant destined to fester. A branch unconnected to the vine withers and corrupts.
Catholic communion is not an idea, nor the acceptance of a set of beliefs. It is standing together at the Altar of God, affirming one faith and receiving together the one Body and Blood of the Christ who is God and brother.
Our bishops have realised from the start of our separation from the Anglican Communion that it was a separation of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage must have a goal. Our goal was the healing of catholic disunity, that Anglicans had sought and then abandoned.
There is great integrity in being a pilgrim. If the destination be holy, God sustains on the journey. We will not be rushed or stampeded. Nor will we falter. So in our waiting as the vision of our destination becomes clearer in the mists of our wandering, let us take clear sight of the martyrs who are our Octave companions. Their echoes are all around us, in the destruction of innocent life, in the failure of episcopal teaching, in the denial of the Christ Child's godliness, in the transformation of love into hate, even within the company of those who bear His Name. The dying Stephen prayed for Saul, and the Church was given Paul, and the world was transformed. These are important days for us, and days that demand that most
difficult of prayers. "That we be transformed, so that the Church may transform the world."
+John
The Most Reverend John Hepworth
Primate
The Traditional Anglican Communion
20TH OCTOBER 2009
“This is a moment of grace, perhaps even a moment of history, not because the past is undone, but because the past is transformed”
STATEMENT from The Most Reverend John Hepworth, Primate of The Traditional Communion. [READ HERE]
26th July 2009
The Year of the Priest
ARCHBISHOP Hepworth writes: Given our status as a Communion that has formally petitioned for “full, Eucharistic Communion” with the Bishop of Rome, and given the status of that Petition, it strongly befits us to accept wholeheartedly the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI to make the present year “The Year of the Priest”. The year is a particular celebration of the life of St John Vianney, the patron of parish priests. I anticipate special celebrations for our priests both nationally (in conjunction with the National Synod) and in the regions of the Diocese. And this is a time for our laity to deepen their understanding and appreciation of priesthood. I do not have to tell you that one of the most misunderstood matters in global Anglicanism at the moment is priesthood.
