Greetings from Our Lady of Walsingham

Many years ago, I visited an Episcopal church in suburban Chicago and was greeted by a rusting and rickety sign that said, "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You."  This sign was regrettably the first thing I saw, for it conveyed the impression--no doubt unintentionally--that the parish put little effort into creating an atmosphere of hospitality.  It was kind of like inviting people to your home for dinner and neglecting to tidy up the house, take out the garbage, and mow the lawn.  The people inside the church, it turned out, were very warm and hospitable, and yet I had to wonder how many other visitors had been put off by that sign.  It may seem like a trivial detail, but welcoming signage can be a critical factor in determining whether people will visit a church. 

  

This is why I was so pleased this past week to see the large statue of Our Lady of Walsingham displayed prominently inside the main entrance to the church on Appletree Street. Stored for a long time in the sacristy of St. John's Chapel, the statue was reverently washed of the dust that had accumulated upon her and placed on the plinth on which she had formerly rested in the chapel.  It is not only formal signage that allows us to make a good first impression on visitors, but also other symbols of welcome and congregational identity like this statue.  The rather awkward placement of the entrances to the church at the sides of the building makes grand signs of hospitality difficult in the small spaces available, but I think this statue works very well as a statement of who we are.  I am glad that the first thing people see when they walk in the main entrance is a beautiful, gleaming statue of Our Lady.  Instead of an empty entrance--save for a bulletin board, rack of devotional pamphlets, and the door to the bathroom--the space has been transformed into a shrine to Our Lady.  As an Anglo-Catholic shrine church, I can think of no more suitable first impression.

Today, I was privileged to see the certificate from 1960 that formally attached the Shrine of Our Lady of Clemency to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in England, which is why we join our shrine prayers at daily evensong to the prayers offered at the shrine in Walsingham.  The display of Our Lady of Walsingham inside the entrance therefore reminds us that our prayers at St. Clement's form part of a larger praying community devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  We now welcome visitors into this shared devotional life beginning at the front door.  St. Clement's has long been admired for its magnificent building, which provides a fitting setting for our equally magnificent liturgy and music.  We now have a fitting welcome that tells visitors and newcomers how happy we are that they have come to pray with us.

A Time Less Ordinary: Exploring the Holy Trinity in Trinitytide

This week we enter the longest season of the Church year, known most commonly as Ordinary Time, but I prefer the traditional name of Trinity-tide, because it identifies the central theological truth on which we should be focusing: that God is three Persons, and yet One.  Now that Jesus has been born, lived, died on the cross, resurrected, and ascended--and the Holy Spirit has descended--we can leisurely enjoy the experience of God as One. And yet the Trinity remains a perplexing concept to many people, including me.  It is especially perplexing, because the images of the Trinity we usually encounter are of an old man (God the Father), a youngish man (Jesus), and a bird (the Holy Spirit).  It is not an intuitive image if one is not pretty biblically literate.  But the image at left is far more instructive in communicating the essential point of it all:  these three persons are equal and part of a group or community.  After all, to be seated at table with others for a meal is a clear statement in most, if not all, cultures that these people are in some kind of caring relationship with each other.

I think the problem is that we get bogged down in trying to intellectualize a phenomenon that is fundamentally relational.  Seminary may have trained me to be a theologian, but as much as I love wading through abstruse theological propositions, these explanations are somehow inadequate and unsatisfying.  The accompanying video of a prayer and a litany to the Holy Trinity is not meant to solve these theological quandaries, but simply to commend personal engagement with God in God's fullness, as equally Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  The video is also meant to encourage us to think more expansively beyond the notions of God with which we are comfortable and to honor folks who are imagining a Jesus who not only looks European, but also African or Native American or Asian; and a Holy Ghost that is not only a dove, but breathing, wind, and spirit.  This is not New Age or postmodern pandering, but an acknowledgement that the Church's tradition and scripture have always included imagery that is diverse and evolving.  So, let's go deeper into our tradition.

What I did not have the space to say in the video is that both the prayer and the litany reveal a human striving for a healthier relationship with God and others.  We ask the Trinity to help us to overcome all of our vices and foibles, so that we may resemble in our own relationships the intimacy between the three persons of the Trinity.  As God is One, so we must strive to be one also.  The Trinity is above all a model of relationship, even when we cannot work out the finer detail of how it works.  The Church teaches us that each person of the Trinity is made of the same substance, and is equal in relationship to the others.  How can we not perceive that God is urging humanity to adopt this same model?  In a world rent by violence, war, murder, abuse, exploitation, and other sins, the importance of a personal and communal engagement with the Trinity is all the more urgent.  Tomorrow, we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, which in my mind, emphasizes that the kind of relationships the Trinity commends are embodied ones.  When we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, may we think of not only our relationship to Jesus in all his fullness, but of our relationship to everybody else in their fullness.