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that make up our lives. Bringing these things as our intentions
at Mass; seeking His advice on them in our prayer; sharing
with Him our frustrations and our hopes, our satisfaction at
work, and asking Him to be with us in the drudgery of a wet
Monday in November – here is how we
can know His Way.
The living personal relationship of
the disciple who is on the Way keeps us
fresh in our knowledge and in our skills.
Mrs Swinburne and the trustees who
established the Cleaver Fund were, as Anglo-Catholics, part
of a movement that was at the radical cutting-edge of mission
in the Church of their day. It was formed in a zealous love of
Jesus Christ in Word and Sacrament, and skilful with the
missional tools of that time. The specific skills that were
needed to evangelise their society in their time may not work
for us. Circumstances change, and if we hold on to an
outcomes-focussed educational model, which teaches only
skills and is not interested in discipleship and formation, then
we shall be left high and dry when circumstances change:
experts in yesterday’s technology, and equipped to evangelise
bygone worlds, bemoaning the irrelevance wrought on us by
I, for one, was delighted that the
Archbishops had the vision for a
Novena of Prayer for the
evangelisation of the nation last
month. The material produced for use
in parishes provided an insight into
contemporary approaches to the
prayer of intercession. There were
very few prayers that could be
described as simple intercession: an
act of prayer by one person on behalf
of another in trust and faith that God
will respond to the petition. Most of
the prayers were self-reflective
prayers asking God to help the person
or persons praying to be more
sensitive and courageous witnesses
and agents of evangelism.
I came across an article in the
Church Times by Bishop John Saxbee
– whose previous books include
Liberal Evangelism – which was an
assessment of the initiative. His
position is fairly typical: ‘the
Enlightenment can’t be undone’; ‘the
modern world-view does not leave
much room for God to respond to
prayer’; ‘prayer is a good thing
because it brings understanding and
heightened awareness of issues and
possibilities about situations when a
person prays about them.’
To my mind this is old hat and
should be thrown out. I often think
about a conversation I had forty years
Knowing ways and means
helps us to know the One
who is the way
Ghostly
Counsel
Why bother praying?
Andy Hawes is Warden of
Edenham Regional Retreat House
ago with a nun at Fairacres. I was
complaining that I had been praying
for a friend who was very ill with
cancer and that God didn’t seem to be
answering the prayer as my friend’s
illness still progressed. The sister
replied very directly, ‘who do you
think you are – God?’ ‘Prayer’, as Dr
Saxbee wrote, ‘is a theological
question’. In the end, what the person
praying believes about God will shape
that person’s prayer. If God is only a
God of ‘the gaps’ then quite a lot of
prayer will be a ‘filling’ process:
something that happens in the small
places where human understanding
and knowledge has not yet succeeded
in removing the unknown.
Our understanding of prayer will
also be determined by what we
understand by being human. If we
believe that humanity by reason can
shape and order the world, and if we
believe that ‘spirituality’ is a useful
change. We shall be working Bakelite telephones in a mobile
age.
People remain the same; and Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But our mission field is evershifting.
The Cleaver Fund allows us to
be trained in the skills we need, and helps
us acquire the knowledge we need; but all
that is useless, indeed a hindrance to
mission, if it is not kept up-to-date. That
is a duty on us all. But what keeps us
fresh and truly relevant is a personal relationship with Christ
through whom alone anyone can come to the Father. That is
why Mrs Swinburne was right also to endow an altar where
the Sacraments are ministered, and our personal relationship
with God is deepened. How can we know the Way? ‘I am the
Way, the Truth, and the Life,’ says the Lord. ND
The Ven. Luke Miller is Archdeacon of London. The centenary of
the death of Friederica Frances Swinburne, foundress of the Cleaver
Ordination Candidates Fund, fell on 14 April. This homily was
preached at the mass of commemoration at All Saints’, Margaret
Street, London on 9 April 2016. www.cleaver.org.uk
complement to the process of reason,
then intercession in an orthodox
sense is useless: another example of
how some people seem know
everything better than Jesus. There is
not enough space here to set about a
demolition of such a position; but the
physical sciences and the study of
consciousness, as well as new
horizons in philosophy, have left the
‘liberals’ of the 1970s stranded on
their own opinions.
Intercession is a work to which God
calls us. Jesus prayed for St Peter to be
strengthened; Peter prayed for the
churches in his care to be faithful;
and in their prayer both were opening
up the pastoral relationship to the
Father: for only the Father knows the
times and seasons and, as the Lord’s
Prayer recognises, is both the provider
of bread, and the deliverer from evil.
The work of prayer is a recognition
that through the gift of the Holy Spirit
God calls us into partnership with
Him; it is a recognition of his trust in
us that we should work with Him in
bearing others’ burdens. Prayer is the
work of the Spirit, who continually
draws us into the mystery of His work.
The whole Christian life is a life for
others, and in the Divine economy to
spend ourselves in prayer for others is
the productive expression of faith that
can ‘move mountains.’
June 2016 ■ newdirections ■ 13