Anglican Ascetic

Fr Matthew C. Dallman
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Homilies, teachings, and interviews from your host, Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B., who is the leading authority on the theology of Martin Thornton, student of the Venerable S. Bede, and founder of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality. Fr Dallman is an Anglican priest: Rector of Saint Paul's, New Smyrna Beach, in Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. frmcdallman.substack.com

  1. 2D AGO

    On Humanity and Christ's Body

    I began last Sunday a sermon series on the Incarnation of Christ, which I continue today and will conclude next Sunday. It is a deep dive into the fact, revealed in Genesis 1.27, that humanity is made in the image of Christ, Who Himself is the image of the invisible God, as Saint Paul teaches (Col 1.15); knowing as well that, as Paul taught in Hebrews 13.8, that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.” Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is He Who revealed to Moses that His Name is “I Am,” also translated as, “The Existing One.” And where that led us is to the consideration that Christ, the I Am, the Existing One, same yesterday and today and for ever, always had a body–that His Nativity of the Virgin Mother was not the first instance of Christ having a human body. Paul calls Jesus Christ the Last Adam–last in the line of Adam (remembering that the word Adam means also humanity itself), so the finished revelation of humanity as a project of God that began in Genesis 1 with the making of the first, or initial humanity in Adam and Eve (Eve, whose name means “Life,” as she the mother of the living). Thus, we can say, following the teaching of Paul and what is revealed in Scripture, that God’s project of making the human being is framed on one hand by the making of the First Adam, and on the other by the completion and perfection of humanity which is Jesus Christ on the Cross; that God’s project reached its completion and perfection is what Christ means when He says in one of His final words, “It is finished.” Finished, completed, fulfilled is the revelation of humanity in its fullest and most sacred form: Christ on the Cross as the divine embodiment of love: of everything that can be in this world, Christ is on the Cross. So we have a line or lineage, a sacred lineage, of God’s project begun in Genesis and completed on the Cross (in John 19.30): First Adam (God’s first sketch of humanity) to the Last Adam (God’s full color and high-resolution image of Himself as Christ’s voluntary sacrifice: for Christ shows us what it is to be God by the way He dies as a human being; and God is love, and greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. God’s project begun in Genesis 1.27–“Let Us make man in Our image”–in the Father’s project of revealing Himself in Christ: of revealing Himself in Christ Who is the completed and perfected human image of God the Father Who is invisible. And it is a project that we see unfolding in Holy Scripture. Saint Luke points to it in the lineage he provides in Luke 3.23-38. Luke gives it to us starting at Christ, and working backward through time. 77 names from Jesus of Nazareth (the Last Adam) back to the First Adam. It is appropriate to tell the lineage backward because Christ is the starting point for understanding humanity, because in Him humanity is revealed in its fullness. The image of Christ, however, is imprinted upon the entire lineage. Adam was stamped in the image of Christ, but so was Seth, his son Enosh, then Cainen, and onward many generations, through Noah, his son Shem and onward; through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Judah and onward, through Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David, and onward–all are being made, being created, being fashioned in the image of Christ. The names on the lineage of course are not the only holy people in all of human history: one of the holiest human beings in Scripture was Joseph, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, that is, of Israel. Perhaps more than any human described in Scripture, Joseph leads a holy life of moral purity, forgiveness, wisdom and leadership, faith in God’s promises, all of which are enabled by God’s favor and presence in his life. He is not listed in the holy lineage, and for that matter neither is Blessed Mary Theotokos, the Mother and bearer of God. Many other holy people are not in the lineage, because the point of Luke’s lineage is not to create a list of holy people (for some of the people on the list, starting with the First Adam, and including David and Judah and several more) had significant moral failings and serious sin). God’s project is His work in progress from Adam through many figures, and therefore through many eras and ages of time. God gives us freewill, which means that having the image of Christ in human bodies is not enough: there must exercise choices to achieve the likeness to Christ, to go along with the image. Because we are made in the image of Christ, we can speak of unity with Christ from our first breath of life. It is only through our choices to live according to Christ and seek to walk in His footsteps that we can conform to the likeness of Christ–that is, acting like Him, thinking like Him, and most importantly, loving like Him. All of this is to say, yes, Christ did have a body before His nativity: all human beings, by virtue of being stamped in His image, are His Body, although quite imperfectly, and in many humans at best only barely. But it is always barely, and never less, never nothing. As I said last Sunday, Christ’s incarnation, His taking of a Body, can be seen to be happening in the making of man in the image of Christ. This making starts with the image of Christ in all human beings, and by the Cross this making is made available to us because we can choose to love God and love our neighbor, the more we choose to do, the more we accrue mercy in our flasks: blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy, taught our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, so that we can grow and be transformed by grace into the likeness of Him Who is the image of the invisible God, and Who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

    16 min

  2. APR 26

    On Being Made in the Image of Christ

    I am going to begin a two sermon series today reflecting on the fact that we are made in the image and according to the likeness of God. It such a rich and profound topic. Firstly I want to bring to our mind one of the characteristics of Jesus Christ that we must always remember is taught to the Church by Saint Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews. It comes in the thirteenth chapter, verse 8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” I say we must always remember this, for a specific reason. And that reason is that we are prone to forget it, or to not consider the profound implications of Paul’s teaching. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Jesus Christ is both God and man yesterday and today and forever. Jesus Christ is dying on the Cross yesterday and today and forever. Jesus Christ is being born yesterday and today and forever. Anything we say about Jesus is true of Him yesterday and Him today and Him forever. The list here could be very long. This is captured cryptically in what Jesus said to Moses at the Burning Bush: Moses said, “When I go to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers sent me to you, and they ask me, What is His Name? what shall I tell them? Jesus said in response: I am Who I am; which is also translated, I am the Existing One. He told Moses to say to the children of Israel, “The Existing One sent me to you.” He always exists, in the wholeness of Himself, as He was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. I said this has profound implications. One of which is this, that Christ has always had a human body, has a human body now, and will have a body forever. And so, Jesus Christ’s Incarnation is the same yesterday and today and forever. His taking of human flesh has been from all time, is happening now, and will happen forever. This flies against the common understanding that Him having a body was only for the relatively short time that He walked on earth, usually construed to be thirty-three years. Before He was born of Mary, the common thinking goes, He had no body but was divine, fully God in heaven with the Father and Holy Ghost; then for thirty-three years He had a human body, which died on the Cross; and since His entombment and His resurrection and ascension, He again has no body. But His resurrection appearances were in a body which ate and drank and was able to be seen and touched and heard; it even had the wounds from His crucifixion on the body. All that is from the resurrection accounts in the Gospel. He had a Body then. Did He have a Body before His Nativity? Saint Paul calls Christ the “Last Adam,” and speaks of the man created in Genesis 2 as “the First Adam,” we would have to say, Yes He had a Body before His Nativity. And we know that the First Adam, along with Eve, was created in the image and according to the likeness of Christ. In their humanity, in their body, they were stamped in Christ’s image. A rubber stamp imprinted an image in ink onto paper, and the image comes from the design of the rubber die that the ink attaches to and by the force of the stamp is left on the paper. Adam and Eve, in fact all of humanity, are stamped in the image of the rubber die. The image is of Christ, so it must be that He exists, and that He has a Body, and that Body is imprinted upon Adam, else there would be no design on the rubber die to replicate. Christ’s incarnation, His taking of a Body, can be seen to be happening in the making of man in the image of Christ. Christ’s image is an image both divine and human. This was imprinted on Adam and Eve, and is imprinted on each one of us. In the words of Origen, century Church Father, “It is our inner man, invisible, incorporeal, incorruptible, and immortal which is made ‘according to the image of God.’” What this points to is the deep spiritual revelation that, because each of us bears Christ’s image, that starting with our baptism, Christ begins to be born in us. All humans bear Christ’s image, as our inner world in our body. Being baptized, being born again, begins the process of reclaiming the likeness to Christ, which is our likeness to His holy virtue, which through discipline we learn to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. This is what Our Lord is after in His teaching in the Gospel when He says, “When a woman has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” This squarely aligns with the beginning of John’s Gospel, when John says, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His Name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” In Baptism, we are taken into Christ, and therefore, Christ enters into us. We are made in His image in our inward body, and in Baptism He begins to grow in us, for He is born in us, that the life we live conforms in likeness to the image we are made in. We conceive the holy Jesus in our heart, and bear Him in our mind. We are His Body; He in us and we in Him. It is His Church and its members. For He is growing in each Christ’s heart and mind: growing, maturing, and thereby transforming us. Jesus, the true human being, the finished, perfected and completed human being, lives in us and feeds us sacramentally that we might grow into His fullness, into His completeness, into likeness with His sacred humanity: a humanity of sacrificial love that voluntarily lays down its life for others. This is the joy of being a human being in Christ, Who is the last human being, the perfected human being, the completed human being. He Who is the same yesterday and today and forever lives in us, that we can live in Him Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

    18 min

  3. APR 19

    On Christ the Good Shepherd

    Our Lord Jesus speaks to us today. He says, “I am the good shepherd.” And it is a message that is particularly suited to Eastertide, and our celebration of Christ’s resurrection; that He has trampled down death by death, and upon those in the tomb, bestowing life. “I am the good shepherd,” He says. This is truly the good news of our religion: that Jesus is our Good Shepherd: that we can know Him, and that He always knows us. In the words of the Anglican priest Isaac Williams, “He that died for us, and gave us that proof of His love, has not gone away, and departed, and left us in the wilderness, but is even now with us as the good Shepherd.” As a Good Shepherd, our resurrected Lord is tender and affectionate with us; He guides us; He wants nothing but the best for us; He cares for us, so much so that when we are lost, He seeks us out, and rejoices when we find Him in His resurrected and glorified Body, and we are found by Him. “I am the Good Shepherd” is one of the seven statements by Jesus that are called His “I am statements.” These have that name because they follow the same form—I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the way, the truth, and the life; I am the true vine; I am the door of the sheep; and I am the good shepherd. All of these I am statements are an echo of how God announced Himself to Moses at the Burning Bush: “Moses said to God, ‘Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they say to me, “What is His name?” what shall I say to them?’ And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM’” Another, more literal translation is, “I am the Existing One.” Throughout scriptural history, there is a small, still voice that speaks—a voice of profound presence, of authority, of creativity—a voice that tells us who we are, a voice that teaches and guides, a voice that beckons us toward what He would have us do. A voice that has spoken through the prophets. The disciples who heard Jesus say He is the Good Shepherd are themselves devout Jews, and thus soaked in imagery of a “shepherd,” which is resonant throughout Scripture. Of course it is in the 23rd Psalm—our Good Shepherd makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us besides still waters, reviving our soul. In the centuries before the Incarnation of Christ, the People of God sang, “We are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand,” a verse from the 95th Psalm which has carried over into the daily Christian Liturgy of Matins for two thousand years. Still deeper were they soaked in the image of the Shepherd through the Book of Ezekiel. This book of oracles, of prophetic preaching, was enormously influential from its inception, influencing other prophetic books as well as the New Testament Book of Revelation. It is from Ezekiel that we have the image of the four evangelists and their allegorical faces—Matthew the angel, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, and John the eagle. It was published during the exile, the Babylonian captivity. Its primary themes include the defiling effect of sin by the people of God and God’s subsequent abandonment. That is a pattern the disciples recognized—how sin leads to feelings of abandonment by God—how sin crucifies Jesus, and Jesus had died and, it seemed, left them. Yet Jesus taught the Church to find Him in the opening of Scripture and breaking of bread. So the Church strives to receive the Eucharist properly and to search the scriptures with new eyes and ears of faith. The 34th chapter of Ezekiel has been powerful for the Church to understand Christ as our Good Shepherd. In Ezekial 34 are four oracles about shepherds, one after another. The first describes evil shepherds. The second describes the nation’s restoration with God as the true shepherd. The third again has to do with evil shepherds, and the final part predicts restoration under a new Davidic shepherd. Let me read portions of that fourth part: “I will save my flock, they shall no longer be a prey; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. . . .I will make with them a covenant of peace . . . And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. . . . And they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, says the Lord God. And you are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God.” Through this passage and the others, Jesus Himself speaks. The Church recognizes Christ the Good Shepherd in the prophecy of Ezekiel. They heeded His voice, for Christ speaks in and through Ezekiel – knowing truly they were the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. As are we. This is how our hope is strengthened. Despite the distortions of a fallen world surrounding us, and even the distortions of our own sinful ways, the voice of our shepherd calls to us. He makes known to us His grace, His love—that our lives are always in His hands. He died for us, and rose to eternal life for us—so that we with confidence can die daily to our sin, that as we seek to put off the old man of our unholy habits and desires, and put on the new man of Christ’s holy garments and thereby rise by Him, with Him, and in Him. And we rise as we receive the bread of angels, the food of heaven—given for our sake to actually make Him present again: present in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist, by which the Holy Shepherd of our souls feeds our souls with Himself: Christ our daily bread, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

    14 min

  4. APR 12

    On Christ Commissioning the Apostles

    We have here in the north and south walls of the nave of the Stations of the Cross. There are fourteen in all. Through each one we follow Christ in His Passion. We accompany Him through the sacramental action of the prayer sequence, one station at a time. As we pray, we participate in the experience of the inward and spiritual grace of Our Lord’s Passion: His holy walk of voluntary sacrifice, all the way to the Cross, through His death on the Cross, and being laid in the Tomb. Our Liturgy in Holy Week and Easter proceed in the same way. We proceed by Stations. We started at the death of Lazarus and his resurrection. We continued to the Station of our Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem upon the back of a donkey. Then to Maundy Thursday and our Lord’s institution of the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Holy Orders. The next station was the Garden of Gethsemane in watching with Our Lord at the Altar of Repose and His arrest. Then on Good Friday, we were with our Lord as He was on the Cross, His dying on the Cross – these were during the Three Hours service. Then to His entombment, in our Tenebrae service. Finally to the Station of His resurrection through the Easter Vigil, which represents the finding of the tomb empty by the Holy Myrrh-bearing Women still in the dark of night, and this carries forth into Easter Day and the wider celebration of His resurrection by the apostles and disciples. Through it all, we were truly with Jesus and with His disciples, by means of the New Testament accounts, the Scriptural accounts, the Liturgy, the hymns and Sacraments. Today we continue to the next station. That next station is our Lord meeting the disciples in the Upper Room. He came to them on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews. And so let us put ourselves again into the story–or, rather, allow the Holy Ghost to lead us deeper into Christ’s mystery. We are in the Upper Room. We share the fear of what the chief priests might do next. We are confused, disoriented, and uncertain what even to do. And yet, we are in truly holy space, holy space like this nave, with this sanctuary. We have been here before: at the Last Supper and the teachings of Christ’s farewell discourse. This is Christ’s house; this is His Father’s house; this is a house of prayer. But … what to do? How to pray? Jesus enters. He came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Our Lord’s first words to them after His mighty resurrection were “Peace be with you.” This was the exchange of peace; the very same we exchange in Mass. He bestowed upon the Church His peace. This peace of heaven; this peace which passes all understanding; this peace spoken by Christ in His resurrected and glorious Body, a Body in which His hands and His side bore the wounds of His Crucifixion. And He said “Peace be with you” a second time. And He said, “As the Father has sent me, even so am I sending you.” To be sent is to become an apostle. The Greek word for apostles is ἀπόστολος, and it means a messenger, one sent forth. This moment, this Station, is beholding Our Lord and Savior commissioning the Apostles. Thus it is fitting for Jesus, in commissioning the Apostles, breathes on them and says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” They are to be bearers of the Holy Spirit. They are made full of the Holy Spirit so that they can proclaim the Gospel to the world: to the Jews and to the Gentiles; their inspired voices to go forth into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. They are made full of the Holy Spirit as Blessed Mary the Virgin Mother was full of the Holy Spirit, as Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist were full of the Holy Spirit, as Simeon and Anna were full of the Holy Spirit. They were truly born not of the flesh nor of the will of man, but born of God, and thus sharers in Christ’s victory over death and the Devil. Christ Himself was alive and resurrected in the Apostles, thus were they able to proclaim the Gospel: forgiveness of sins, and the Gospel about eternal life in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It was because they were full of the power of the Holy Spirit that Saint Peter’s preaching on Pentecost, which our first reading picks up just after Peter finished, was able to draw three thousand souls to be baptized on the day of Pentecost. The power of the Holy Spirit is to draw people to Christ, to life abundant in Him. And the power of the Holy Spirit drew the three thousand not only to Baptism but to life in Christ’s Body the Church: hence, the three thousand souls joined in with the liturgical prayer life of 120 Upper Room disciples. Saint Luke captures this when he writes, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers”–to those three modes of prayer: of life in community sharing the revelation proclaimed by the Apostles, of the Eucharist, and of the daily liturgy (that is, “the Prayers”). By this threefold pattern, called in Anglican tradition the threefold regula, we participate in the peace Christ bestows on His Church; we receive the peace that keeps our heart and mind nourished by the knowledge and love of God, of His Son Jesus Christ; by this pattern, this model, this rule or regula, the Holy Spirit is kept among us, that He, with the Father and Son, always remains with us, and in us, and we in Them. This is life in Christ, this threefold pattern of prayer: life in Him Who died for our sins, and rose again for our justification. He rose again, that is, so that we could be capable of partaking in the divine nature, in the words of Saint Peter. Because of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, the dry land of our sinful and unholy life can become the green earth of the life of new spiritual creation in Christ. By this life in Christ, we put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, and serve Christ in pureness of living and truth. Thanks be to God for the witness of the Apostles, their courage, their fortitude, and their generosity in showing us what life of prayer in Christ looks like, that we can ever join them and the angel in their prayer and in their holy song; that through the threefold life of liturgical and sacramental prayer and fellowship, we can do all such good works as Christ has prepared for us to walk in; to be in Him, and He in us: Christ Jesus our Lord and Saviour, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

    17 min

  5. APR 5

    On Entering into Christ's Tomb

    It is a great joy to share with you all in the heavenly peace brought into the world by Jesus Christ, on this the day of His resurrection. I want to welcome especially our visitors to this holy space on this most holy of occasions. It is a blessing to have you with us. You are always welcome to pray with us in worship of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we invite you to pray for us, and to join us every week in worship and fellowship, as this church in joy and humility continues to carry out the mission that God is calling us to perform in Volusia County. Our Lord’s Easter, our Lord’s Passover, in Greek His “Pascha,” is to us the feast of feasts and festival of festivals, as far exalted above all. Beautiful indeed last night were our splendid array and procession of light, which united us all together, lighting up the dark night with plentiful fires. The spreading of light from the Paschal Candle to everyone’s personal candle is a symbol of the great light, both the heavenly light that makes signals from above, shining on the whole world in its own beauty, and equally the light above the heavens, in the angels, in the Saints. It is the great light that seeks to enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may always know that Christ is Risen. The Church as a whole—all two billion plus of us Christians alive today, along with the great cloud of witnesses of the Saints, along with the faithfully departed in Paradise, along with the countless Christians yet to be come—is always on mission. Our mission is to proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to the Right Hand of the Father—in the words of Saint Paul, to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is.” We seek, again following Saint Paul, “to set our minds on things that are above,” and “to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of our Creator God.” Our mission indeed is to be alive to God in Christ Jesus — alive to God as He lives and moves and has His being in and through all of His creatures, both great and small. And alive to Him, our mission is to love Him, and love Him as well as He lives in all people. Because He has ascended to the Father, He is available to us always and everywhere, to be praised, adored, worshiped and followed. He is available to us during our best moments, our “peak” moments on the mountaintop of joy and gladness. He is available to us in our darkest moments of pain, grief and anxiety, our “valley” moments when we feel the lowest of the low. And He is available to us in our every-day, mundane moments of normal life and normal routine and normal responsibilities and challenges. Indeed available to us so that in seeking Him, we may find Him, always and everywhere. Today indeed there is harmony in the world, for over these last 24 hours or so, the Resurrection has been experienced the world over, from one end of God’s world to the other, timezone by timezone, diocese by diocese, church by church, altar by altar. The whole earth has been trembling—first at the crucifixion of Christ on the cross, because we were there when we crucified Him. And now the earth is trembling not in pain and grief but in joy and harmony at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of God in Christ, who searches us out, and knows us: our holy God Who knows our downsitting and our uprising, and Who understands our thoughts long before we do. The stone has been taken away from the tomb. Brothers and sisters, the stone has been rolled away from the tomb not so Jesus can get out, but so that we might enter in. That we might enter more deeply into the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, given to Him by the Virgin Mary, the holy mystery of Jesus Who is the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Let us enter this mystery of the empty tomb through compassion for Saint Mary Magdalene, even imagining ourselves with her as she stood weeping outside the tomb—indeed a flood of tears. A man she supposes to be a gardener—indeed it is Jesus not yet known to be resurrected yet in His great love tending to His garden of disciples—says, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?”—words that echo Jesus’s first words recorded by Saint John in the first chapter of his Gospel spoken to John the Baptist and other disciples, and words that have been echoing around the mind and memory of the Church ever since. “Whom do you seek?” Whom do we seek? And to the weeping, sorrowful Mary, filled with desolation that comes from loving Jesus yet not yet made aware of His presence, indeed like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Saint Luke’s gospel, “kept from recognizing Him,” Jesus speaks tenderly, clearly and profoundly as only He can. He said to her, “Mary,” and she recognized Him. She recognized Him because He reminded her of who she was, saying her name as only He could. He only said a word, and her soul was healed. Jesus tells us who we are, as well. He only speaks a word, and we are healed. We are healed in Him, thus we are people of His resurrection. We are born, not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. We are baptized into His body, to be forever members of His body. Brothers and sisters, let us ask for the intercessions of Saint Mary Magdalene, that we too might proclaim by word and example, indeed proclaim in all our lives, the simple, life-changing truth: “I have seen the Lord.” For only by Him are our lives made whole. For nothing is like the wonder of our salvation in Christ, mine and yours: all of us in Christ, all of our lives in Christ,, and Christ in all of us, in each baptized person Christ lives and moves and has His being, He through Whom all things are made and remade: Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with the Father Almighty in the unity of the Holy Ghost; ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

    13 min

  6. APR 5

    On Proclaiming the Resurrection of Christ

    It was the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee who went into the tomb. The stone was rolled away, but they did not find the body. What they found was new and utterly unfamiliar. And they were perplexed. And why wouldn’t they be? The mystery of their Master, their and our loving Lord Jesus Christ, took yet another turn. Jesus had lived and taught in such mystery—always confronting His followers with their own shadows, yet confronting always with love and presence that to not follow Him felt empty and wrong. It was the women who treasured and kept and abided in the words of Jesus—the women before the men for the most part. They had been taught, it seems, by Our Lord’s most blessed and chaste Mother: Mary, who was named by the angel full of grace. She too was perplexed when she was confronted by God’s truth: that He had made her the fullness of grace, and that she, who had known no man, would conceive in her womb and bear a son, and would call His name Jesus—He who would reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of Whose kingdom there shall be no end—that she would be the Mother of Son of God. At hearing this she was greatly troubled, we are told by Saint Luke. She too had entered into the new and utterly unfamiliar, a mystery of the same order as the cave on Easter Sunday morning. Since then the Church has been imprinted with this pattern which we have learned from God: when we are confronted by His presence, He very well might manifest Himself in the new and utterly unfamiliar. In some sense, this should be how we expect God to come to us—expecting, it seems, the unexpected, but also expecting to be perplexed, even troubled, and to have to grapple with something we feel ill-equipped to handle. What we should never be is scared; because we are always in God’s hand, and He is ever-watching over His flock like the Good Shepherd. Our job is to be faithful as God works the newness of His creation through His Son and through us. Our job is to be faithful: faithful in prayer and worship, in giving of ourselves to God and His Church, in giving of ourselves to others, for God lives in all those who are made in His image—and all people are made in His image, and so we are to give ourselves to whomever God calls us to serve, and do so with the joyful action of love. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son—that in giving Him to us on the Cross, we might be taught what true humility looks like: for our loving Lord Jesus is for all times the sacrament of humility, even so in the way we receive Him today in the most ordinary form of bread and wine: ordinary, simple, accessible: so humble as to be vulnerable, for we so easily forget that He is always with us in the Tabernacle. He became so vulnerable in His humility that He allows Himself to be forgotten in the Tabernacle, where He rests all but two days of the year. Brothers and sisters, let us always remember Him as He rests in perfect peace in our Tabernacle, consecrating this space as sacred, heavenly—everywhere there is a Tabernacle with the Blessed Sacrament, there is the holy land, there is the new Jerusalem. Remembering our Lord allows us to be formed by Him. This was the first teaching given to the women early on that first Easter Sunday morning: remember. Remember the words of Jesus, remember what He told you, remember—in other words, keep all the words of Our Lord in our heart, treasuring them, pondering them, like Blessed Mary taught the early Church to do. Brothers and sisters, it is a blessed Easter! Our Lord—truth Himself, truth incarnate— has overcome the sharpness of death, and has did open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. He opened the tomb not so that He could get out, but so that we might enter in: entering in by faith in Him, abiding in His words, that we might dwell in Him, and He in us. And abiding in us, fill us with hope, with peace, and with direction. He told the women to proclaim the Resurrection to the men. Let us be so emboldened to proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in our loving and merciful actions to every person we meet—that the joy of Christ may be in their hearts; the joy of Him Who lives and reign with God Almighty, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end . Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

    12 min

  7. APR 1

    On the Bridegroom as Icon of God

    PROPERS FOR HOLY WEDNESDAY (Bridegroom Services) MATINS: Lev. 16:2-24 | Jn 16 EVENSONG: Job 2:1-10 | Mt 26:6-16 INTROIT. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us. COLLECT: OF THE DAY. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God: that we, who are continually afflicted by reason of our transgressions, may be delivered by the Passion of Thine Only-begotten Son: Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. A READING FROM THE PROPHET ISAIAH (50:4-11). The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. Morning by morning he wakens, he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant, who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God? Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who set brands alight! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the brands which you have kindled! This shall you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment. TRACT. As the Lord was going to His voluntary Passion, He said to the Apostles on the way, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered up, as it is written of Him. Come, therefore, let us also go with Him, purified in mind. Let us be crucified with Him and die through Him to the pleasures of this life. Then we shall live with Him and hear Him say: I go no more to the earthly Jerusalem to suffer, but to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God, I shall raise you up to Jerusalem on high in the Kingdom of Heaven. GRADUAL. Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us. THE HOLY GOSPEL ✠ OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO S. JOHN (12:17-50). In those days, the crowd that had been with him when he called Laz′arus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead bore witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. The Pharisees then said to one another, “You see that you can do nothing; look, the world has gone after him.” Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Beth-sa′ida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew went with Philip and they told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If any one serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the Father will honor him. Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify thy name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing by heard it and said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” He said this to show by what death he was to die. The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Christ remains for ever. How can you say that the Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?” Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” When Jesus had said this, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, yet they did not believe in him; it was that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Therefore they could not believe. For Isaiah again said, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.” Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. And Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And he who sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me.” OFFERTORY SENTENCE. Thy Bridal Chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me. SECRET. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to accept these our oblations: and vouchsafe so to work in us, You Who show forth in a mystery the Passion of Thy Son our Lord, that we may by our devout affections receive the benefit of His redemption; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. COMMUNION SENTENCE. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. 2ND POSTCOMMUNION PRAYER. O Lord and Master of our life! Take from us the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servants. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant us to see our own transgressions and not to judge our brother, for blessed art Thou, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

    15 min

  8. MAR 31

    On the Bridegroom's Perfect Patience

    EVENSONG: Job 1:13-22 | Mt 24:3-35 INTROIT. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us. COLLECT: OF THE DAY. O Lord God, Whose blessed Son, our Saviour, gave His back to the smiters and hid not His face from shame; grant us grace to take joyfully the sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be revealed; through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

    15 min
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About

Homilies, teachings, and interviews from your host, Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B., who is the leading authority on the theology of Martin Thornton, student of the Venerable S. Bede, and founder of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality. Fr Dallman is an Anglican priest: Rector of Saint Paul's, New Smyrna Beach, in Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. frmcdallman.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Fr Matthew C. Dallman
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    238
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Fr Matthew C Dallman
  • Show Website
    Anglican Ascetic

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