20/20 Hindsight, our Frailty, and God's Succor

This past month or so has brought with it a lot of self-reflection about parenting, teaching our young people, and our society at large.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and other concerning studies have sparked some very worthwhile professional discussions at school about students and cell phones.

Last week at church we heard about a new boys’ boarding school, St. Dunstan’s, whose goal will be to integrate life, school, and work with the rhythms of liturgical life. Grades lose their meaning and instead, getting the trig problem right means building a secure roof versus one that falls on your head. There’ll be no cell phones or social media. We were confronted with a real indictment of our society and how unique we are in allowing little to no independence along with little to no “curated” culture — such an apt description. We also no longer have any real rites of passage for our boys, especially.

Shaking our heads, we wonder how in the world we’ve gotten to where we are today — so many things to reconsider — so many things to question — so many decisions that missed the mark. How did our lives become so disjointed? But, the reason “hindsight is 20/20” has reached cliché status is because it’s so often true. We do the best we can in the moment and try to move forward with God’s grace.

I’m finding some encouragement in the Collects from last week and today: “Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy; and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” and “O Lord, we beseech thee, let they continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”

There are a lot of hopeful truths here as we look to God’s mercy and pity for His cleansing, defending, and succor.

Another aspect of life that needs some serious reflection is our society and its understanding of (the) Church. We’re grateful for the path our lives have taken, but, again, we are almost dumbfounded at why it took us decades to realize the riches of Anglicanism.

We need to look to the whole of life as we integrate worship with our everyday lives. G.W.O. Addleshaw reminds us that we can’t separate our worship from the dogmatic truths that undergird it; he summarizes: “The liturgy is vitally connected with everyday life; it presupposes that the body, whose voice it is, should embrace every side of man’s life, and that the life of the body in all departments should reflect the justice and charity proclaimed by the dogma.” He asserts that we will never recover the “wholeness of life” unless “in the liturgy of the Church the Eucharistic sacrifice is given that emphasis and centrality which is its due.” Addleshaw concludes his work with this insight: “It is in the Eucharist that the community expresses itself according to its true nature, that which in the divine purpose it is meant to become; here it is offered in union with Our Lord to the Father and takes its place in the divine order; here it most truly adores the eternal Trinity for whose honour and glory it exists.” Here is the wholeness of life, the union between heaven and earth, God and man, eternity and time. Succor indeed.

The Liturgical Life

As I meditate on the truth of Christ in me (see my last post), E.L. Mascall’s rich understanding of the Eucharist and its transformative nature comes to mind. Directly related to Grafton’s thoughts, he writes:

“So, then, the Eucharist is the one perfect act of worship that we can offer to God. And far from Eucharistic worship being a matter merely of the sanctuary and the sacristy, it is of direct relevance to the world in which Christians live and work and love and die. For the Body which appears in its sacramental form upon our altars is the same Body which in its mystical form is at work in the world and of which we are members, in a quite true sense, therefore, what Christians do in the world, in their work and in their play, is identical with the offering made upon the altar and with the act of worship made by Christ in heaven. That is to say, for the Christian as a member of the Body of Christ, his whole life is liturgical […] For the Christian, then, in the Mystical Body, life and worship are but two elements in one great act, the self-offering of Christ the God-man to the Father in heaven. Life itself is liturgical, for whether the Christian serves God or whether he sins against him, he is acting as a member of the Body, and it is in the Eucharist that his life is given true interpretation as not merely his life, but the life of Christ in him: ‘I live; and yet, no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.’”