Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Almighty and everlasting God, grant unto us an increase of faith, hope and charity: and that we may obtain what thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command.
Today’s collect contains a petition that God would grant unto us an increase of faith, hope and charity, followed by an aspiration that, in order to obtain his promises, we may be enabled to love those things that he commands. The charity of which the collect speaks is the divine charity, which is the love of God, that suffereth long and is kind, that seeketh not her own, is not unseemly, beareth all things, believeth all things and endureth all things. In this life we cannot claim superior knowledge, for we see but through a glass darkly. Only in the final consummation of things will we see face to face, and will know fully even as we are known. For of the three great spiritual gifts of faith, hope and charity, the greatest is charity.
How might we apply the words of the collect to our situation today? Today we live with the legacy of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. The self styled Enlightenment claimed that whereas prior generations lived in an age of faith (or what the Enlightenment saw as superstition) the human race had now come of age and no longer needed to rely on any authority other than individual reason. A new age of reason and science was dawning that would replace an earlier age of superstition. Man was now the master of his fate and the captain of his soul. He could now achieve objective knowledge and ruthlessly use it to exercise control over his environment. Theology and metaphysics had held the human race back and it was now necessary to create a civilised, but non religious, humanity that lived by reason alone. Man was no longer seen as fallen and sinful and needing to rely on divine grace to achieve salvation. The human race could achieve perfection through the application of human reason to every area of enquiry. History was no longer seen to come to a climax in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, but rather in the eighteenth century Enlightenment.
More recently, the contemporary Western world has come to realise that the eighteenth century Enlightenment was a far more ambiguous affair than had previously been supposed. It has produced a society that is strong in terms of science and technology, but weak in terms of ethical and spiritual resources. The Enlightenment merely replaced earlier conflicts about religion, with new and even more brutal conflicts fought in the name of reason. Those who claimed to have dispassionate objective knowledge turned out to be using their supposed superior knowledge to control others. Hence, we now find ourselves living in an age which is called “post- modern”, for we are now told that there is no view from no where, that all claims to truth (including those of reason and science) are in reality power games to control people. There are no longer any absolute standards, only preferences, and the truth (although the post-modernist no longer believes in truth) is whatever we feel at any given time. We are no longer the masters of our fate, and the captains of our souls, but rather people who create our own values and virtual reality, which is whatever we feel at any given time. Anyone who questions what “I feel” is to be cancelled and shut down, for we live in an age in which we are taught at every opportunity to cultivate our own “self worth” and “self esteem”. So we now find ourselves in a very peculiar situation. The Enlightenment originally rejected Christianity in the name of reason and science, but now the post- modern world rejects not only Christianity, but reason and science as well.
What can we do to preach the Gospel to a post- modern world, that no longer believes in anything, including reason and science, other than what human beings create for themselves? The answer lies, as it has always done, in St. Paul’s message of charity. This is not the self styled dispassionate objective knowledge prized by the Enlightenment, for charity is not about being a dispassionate observer, but being passionately involved in what one is knowing and doing. At the same time it is not purely subjective or an exercise in wish fulfilment as the post modernist would have us believe. For while there is no dispassionate objective knowledge in the Enlightenment sense this does not mean that everything is subjective. For charity enables us to look outside of ourselves and our own wants, desires and feelings and live self sacrificially for others. For it is the nature of charity to give of itself, to be passionately involved, but yet not purely a subjective and transient state of feeling. As St. Paul puts it if a man thinks he knows something he knows not yet as ought to know, but the man who loves God is known by God.
Perhaps no one has devoted so much time to thinking about this subject as St. Augustine. He defined sin as disordered love, and said in his great work “The City of God” that two loves had built two cities, that which is grounded on the self, and that which is grounded on the love of God, the God who has made us for himself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him. Whereas the Greeks tended to locate the centre of the person in the reason or intellect and disparaged emotion, the Hebrews (and consequently the Bible) saw the heart as the centre of the person. For the heart involves both thought and feeling, and though it is corrupt and deceitful above all things, it is capable of being transformed by divine grace, which is the love of God. For when we speak of the divine charity, the love that is truly sacrificial, we are speaking not of our love for God, but rather of God’s love for us.
Let us therefore make our own the words of today’s collect that God would give unto us an increase of faith, hope and charity, and that we may obtain his promises, we may be enabled to love those things that he commands.
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
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