There is an axiom in the Church about the Saints. And that axiom is: the Saints are always to be admired, and when possible, imitated. This applies to all Saints, whether those of the New Testament, the apostolic era, and up to today. And so that includes S. John the Baptist. His importance is non-debatable, because all four Evangelists describe his role in God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. Yet imitating John seems difficult, for a number of reasons. He lived two thousand years ago, in a different culture, in a different society, spoke a different language, and so forth. And that he ate different things, for goodness sake. Locusts and wild honey! Wild honey, ok, maybe, I think (except for perhaps all the bees). But locusts, or eating any bug, is a bridge too far. Also, I mean, his clothes are a little (what shall we say?) . . . austere: the leather belt around his waist sounds dapper enough, but being clothed with camel’s hair? Like, everywhere camel’s hair? And then, look at this family. Not only was John a Saint, but John had a Saint for his mother, a Saint for his father, the Queen of Heaven for his “auntie,” and the Eternal Word of the Father as a “cousin.” Not easy to relate with John the Baptist based on his diet, clothing, and family relations!Let me say that the diet is not what it seems to be. Scripture shows this. In Ezekiel chapter 3, the prophet Ezekiel hears Christ speak to him. He hears Him say: “‘Eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.’ So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.’ Then I ate it; and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.” So when we are told that John the Baptist eats honey, it is a reference made by the Evangelists to Ezekiel, and this reference serves to describe John the Baptist as a student of Scripture, even one that tastes the sweetness of Scripture, which means a profound reading of Scripture where the Holy Spirit reveals truths hidden from all eternity. And as far as the locusts, we look at the Book of Exodus, the 10th chapter, which reads “Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come upon the land of Egypt.’ The locusts, along with all of the plagues, represent God’s judgment upon Pharaoh which is announced by Moses, even prepare Pharaoh for God’s judgment which God will accomplish in the Red Sea. And so here, because John the Baptist is described as eating locusts, this is to tell us that he understands God’s judgment, and has experienced it so as to be able to proclaim about it to others. Like Moses, John has received power to proclaim God’s coming judgment, which is exactly what it means to bear the witness that John bears as the voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”Yet with that said, is it even possible to imitate John, at all? And to that I say, yes, it is, if one understands how. And that understanding is found by remembering that Saint John the Evangelist, in his Gospel account, tells us that that there was a man sent from God, who came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that through Him people might believe in the Light – the Light who is Christ. John is that man, sent to bear witness to the Light that people believe in the light. Despite being so different from John, in this way we are exactly like him; his mission is our mission, and ours is like his. We are to bear witness to the Light who is Christ. Indeed we are to imitate John in this work.And there is another way. And here we must realize that John almost certainly had known about Jesus all his life, hearing we can assume from his mother Elizabeth, and even from Mary herself, about the message Gabriel brought Mary, that Christ is the Savior spoken of in Scripture. And are we not like John in this way, also? Most if not all of us are like this: we have grown up knowing parts of the story of Jesus, even those parts. For many of us, there is not a time we remember when we did not know at least a little bit about Christ. John is living with the knowledge of Jesus, as we live with knowledge of Jesus. John understood Jesus to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, as we do. Yet as this is the case for John and for us, at the same time, there is so much of Christ yet to be revealed to him and us. For example, what about the Second Coming? Or even, what happens after we die? On these important matters, John knew nothing more than we do. The Coming of Christ is full glory to judge the quick and the dead, and to judge us, was as much a mysterious doctrine to him as it is for us. And the same with the doctrine of Christian death. We walk in hope, in trust, in faith: John walked in hope, in trust in faith. Christ, the Lamb of God, walked among him, and Christ the Lamb of God walks among us, and feeds us.So to imitate John the Baptist, ultimately, is to realize the immense power of Jesus Christ, and that His immense power is wrapped in mystery and expectation. If Advent emphasizes having an attitude of watching, and an attitude of recognizing Christ as the Coming One, John the Baptist shows a person who watches and waits from the Coming One. John embodies the attitude of Advent, embodies Advent itself, and not only in what John thinks but what he says. And this attitude we can have, and do have. That although we do not know precisely what is coming when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead, and even when we are judged, or what happens after we did; what we know now is what John proclaimed: make straight the way of the Lord, and do so now. We can actually say that with John the Baptist, and understand it in much the same way, even the exact way, he did. To make straight the way of the Lord is to seek God’s grace, grace which delivers us from our sins, grace which purify us from our iniquities. So that when Christ shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, He may find a room in us prepared for Him, and that we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold His appearing. Amen. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

[Note: the audio recording above will vary in places from the prepared text below.]We hear holy words from our Lord Jesus today. He is speaking to Peter, James, John, and Andrew, and it is from these four Saints that His teaching has come down to us. They had asked him about the Temple, and Jesus had foretold to them the destruction of the Temple. And in speaking about the destruction of the Temple, our Lord spoke as well about the chaos that would ensue. This chaos would include false prophets and teachers supposing to speak in Christ’s Name. It would include wars and rumours of wars. It would include earthquakes and famines in various places. And all this would, Jesus said to the four Saints, be but the beginning of the sufferings.And about those our Lord surely meant the persecutions that He foretold, that as the disciples would bear testimony in synagogues and preach the Gospel to all nations, that they would also be brought to trial. Jesus instructed them not to be anxious about what they are to say. He assured them that the Holy Spirit would give them utterance, as He gave Moses the words to say before Pharaoh and the children of Israel. And yet He warned them that they would be hated for His Name’s sake. But that through it all, Jesus said, He who endures to the end will be saved, thereby teaching that the virtue of Fortitude is necessary to the Christian life.It was then that our Gospel passage picks up the narrative from Saint Mark. In speaking about the days after Jesus is crucified and resurrected – that is, in speaking about the life of the Church – Jesus said that the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers (that is, the angels) in the heavens will be shaken. All of this is symbolic, figurative description of the life of the Church Militant that fights against the Prince of this world (I am speaking of the Devil and his unholy army of fallen angels). While the Church in heaven is triumphant and at rest, the Church on earth (the Church Militant) is fighting against the Devil who is ever luring people on earth to works of darkness. And this happens in several ways: We the Church are the people of Light, and it is the Church that fights against the darkness which is people walking in the darkness which is the state of spiritual deadness. Another way this happens is within the Church, for the Church Militant on earth is sometimes caught up in heresy and schism, most famously perhaps in the fourth century when most of the bishops of the Church accepted the teaching of a bishop named Arius, which was a heretical teaching that came to be known as Arianism: that Jesus, while unique and prophetic unlike any human being, was not co-eternal with the Father, but was a creature and not God the Son. It was only a small minority of Bishops who believed what we do today: that Christ is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, being of one substance with the Father. We owe so much to those fourth Century Church Fathers who fought back the heresy – Church Fathers such as Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Athanasius the Great, as well as Saint Nicholas of Myra, and Saint Anthony the Monk.And of course fighting the Devil’s constant enticements to works of darkness happens in the heart of every person, in the heart of every Christian. We are all awaiting the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory, to judge both the quick and the dead. Jesus assures us that no matter what of the world dies and passes away, but His words will never pass away. And when He tells us to “watch,” He surely means in the sense that He taught His disciples to abide in His words, to love His words, and to keep His words. But He in emphasizing twice the necessity to watch – because we do not know when the master of the house will come, that is, when Christ will come in His glory at the end of days – lest He come suddenly and find us asleep, He says to us as He said to Peter, James, John, and Andrew: Watch. What are we to watch? We are to watch our heart. Watch what catches our heart. Watch what our heart follows and is enamored by. Is it Christ? Or is it an idol we put before Christ? We say we believe in Christ, but does our heart agree with our words? We have, as Saint Paul affirms, all speech and knowledge that we need to be enriched and fed by Christ. Paul says the Church and her members are not lacking any spiritual gift. And Paul also assures us that God is faithful. All God wants is our heart. Let us, my dear brothers and sisters, again get our hearts right, that in His coming to us, we have made room in our hearts to receive Him – that our heart not made to sleep by worship of idols, but is ever awake to Christ and rejoices at His coming. Amen. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

[Note: the audio recording above will vary in places from the prepared text below.]Continuing our reflections on Stewardship given the season, we turn our focus today entirely to our Gospel passage. S. Matthew presents us with the Parable of the Ten Maidens. The first things to say is that many of our Lord’s parables are short, and therefore open-ended, by design; this one is, on the other hand, is long, and therefore has been seen by the Church as less-opended and more specific in its meaning; but at the same time, fairly cryptic. So let us go through it.We are told by Christ that the ten maidens possessed lamps, and that five were wise, and five were foolish. The five wise maidens were wise because they had flasks of oil with them; whereas the five foolish maidens were foolish because they had no flasks of oil. All ten sought to meet the Bridegroom, who came to them after they slumbered and slept. Finally, the Bridegroom came in at midnight, and a cry was heard to come out to meet him. The five with the oil were welcomed to the marriage feasts; the five without the oil were shut out from the marriage feast, even by the Bridegroom who said, “I do not know you.” And at the end of the parable, Jesus says, “Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”This entire parable is symbolic at every turn and in every detail. Firstly, we notice that this is a parable which describes, according to Jesus, the kingdom of heaven. So this is a parable about the Holy Spirit: how He is experienced and how the Holy Spirit works in our lives. In the last detail provided by Jesus, He tells us to watch; that is Our Lord’s way of exhorting us to prayer, to love His Holy teaching, to keep His words – basically, our Lord commanding us a life of devotion to Him. So the Holy Spirit works us in through our devotion to Christ, is the first thing to say about what the parable means.Yet what about the oil? Having oil, or not having oil, is crucial to being welcomed by Christ into the marriage feast. And what is the marriage feast? Let’s take that first. The marriage feast come after a cry, “Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet Him.” And this cry comes after the maidens and slumbered and slept. That symbolizes death, for in death we slumber and sleep. And the cry at midnight, which is the invitation to fellowship with Christ, represents the Second Coming of Christ when, as the Creed says, “He shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead.” (‘Quick’ is an older expression for living.) And so another level of meaning is added: the Holy Spirit works through our devotion to Christ, and doing so prepares us, or not, for the final judgment. And those who possess oil, enter into the kingdom which shall have no end, according to the Creed: the marriage feast is endless life in the Holy Spirit, the consummation of our marriage to God through Christ in Whose Body we live.Then what does it mean to possess oil? And for this is it necessary to know that in Greek, “oil” and “mercy” are closely related words with the same root. Thus to have flasks of oil is to possess God’s mercy. But then how does one receive God’s mercy? We receive mercy from God. Saint Paul teaches that “God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy.” Who does God want to have mercy upon? Jesus teaches clearly on this in His sermon on the mount: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” And so the symbol of possessing oil means those who are merciful in their lives. And to be merciful, what does that mean? The Church understands that in two groups: corporal works of mercy, and spiritual works of mercy.Corporal works of mercy tend to the bodily needs of creatures. There are seven: Feed the hungry; give water to the thirsty; clothe the naked; shelter the homeless; visit the sick; visit the imprisoned; bury the dead.With the spiritual works of mercy, there are seven as well, and seek to relieve spiritual suffering: instruct the ignorant; counsel the doubtful; admonish the sinners; bear patiently those who wrong us; forgive offenses; comfort the afflicted; pray for the living and the dead.Thus the wise maidens—wise disciples, in other words—are those are merciful, and in being merciful, receive mercy, the oil of God’s gladness. The foolish maidens—foolish disciples—are those who do not practice works of mercy, and therefore possess no oil of God’s gladness, which is given to the merciful.My dear brothers and sisters, mercy is love set in motion. Because our Lord Jesus showed unfathomable mercy in taking our sufferings on Himself in order to grant us His Kingdom (the Holy Spirit) which sets us free from captivity to the Evil one, and in view of God’s mercy to all, we in turn are to be merciful to all, whether tending to bodily needs of others or to spiritual needs of others. It is about the giving of our selves in sacrifice, of being a living sacrifice as Paul teaches, as the widow who gave but a small coin but her whole heart, knowing she is God’s coin, giving therefore of all herself to God; the giving of our time, talent, along with treasure (time in prayer, talent in service, treasure in giving), to receive God’s mercy. That in being filled with mercy, our flasks are full of oil, that we may we enter into the heavenly marriage feast. Just as before we are forgiven we must forgive, before we know and enjoy the love in the heavenly realm in eternity we must love others within the earthly realm of time and space. Let us in asking for Christ’s mercy (as we does throughout the Liturgy), know that we are asking for the grace to be merciful in our lives, to practice works of mercy whether corporal or spiritual, the mercy by which and with which we perform true Christian stewardship; that at the last day we might be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air—and in meeting Him, seen by Him: seen by Him as full of mercy, that is, full of Him, because we have given completely of ourselves as living sacrifices, completely of our time, talent, and treasure. That being full of Him, in us He sees Himself, and says: “I know you; enter into the marriage feast—I have been waiting for you.” Amen. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Our understanding of the doctrine of the Saints comes from a single verse from S. Jude’s Epistle. He wrote of the importance of preserving the fullness of the faith, once delivered to the Saints. The Saints preserve the fullness of the faith. And so today we celebrate the Saints, for the Lord is glorious in His Saints. That Saints are loved by the whole Church in all of its eras over time is obvious. Just look around at the Christian world: everywhere we see parish churches, cathedrals, monasteries, hospitals, fellowship groups, and more that have a Saint as their patron. Our church under the patronage of Saint Paul the Apostle; our cathedral in Orlando under the patronage of Saint Luke the Evangelist and Physician (also the patron of the Order of S. Luke, of which this parish has a chapter). The oldest parish church in the English-speaking world is in Canterbury, under the patronage of S. Martin of Tours (whose day on the Kalendar is this Saturday, 11 Nov.). York Minster in England is dedicated to S. Peter. Canterbury Cathedral in England has something of a patronage under S. Augustine of Canterbury, who led the re-evangelization of England in the 6th century. In the Vatican in Rome, of course, is the Basilica of S. Peter.I could go on and on because the role of the Saints in the life of Christianity is undeniably important. We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, Saint Paul teaches. We are surrounded by them because they are our fellow-servants; we are one with all the Saints through Jesus Christ, all of us members of His Body, and members one with another. A person being named after a Saint remains a common practice, as well as knowing if one’s birthday falls on a Saints’ day on the liturgical kalendar.S. Paul has more to say about the Saints in our Epistle reading today. He prays that God may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (as the Saints have, he implies), having the eyes of our hearts enlightened (as the Saints have), that we may know what is the hope to which He has called us (which the Saints have), what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the Saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power in us who believe (which the Saints enjoy). The Saints are the primary examples we have about what it means for the power of the Holy Spirit to work immeasurable greatness in and through us. They are the primary examples of what it means to love Jesus Christ. They are primary examples of what it means to be His disciple: meaning, examples of denying oneself, taking up one’s cross, and following Christ. The Saints are primary examples to us that all temptations brought before us by the Devil and our frailty can be overcome and rejected, having a heart right and steadfast, a heart that cleaves to Christ through life’s trials and turbulence. The Saints are the primary examples of what it means to make our ways straight (as S. John Baptist taught) and to have hope in Christ, to fear the Lord, trust in Him, and participate in Christ’s salvation in all times of consolation as well as all times of affliction and desolation.It is sometimes taught that we can understand the Saints as “true friends.” We call a person a “true friend” when we have a living relationship with that person in which both people want the best for each other. The same goes for the Saints. We are truly participating in the Communion of the Saints, as the Apostles’ Creed has it, when the Saints are for us more than names attached to church and cathedrals, more than icons or stained glass images we see in holy places, when they are more than characters in the Gospel story. The Saints are truly for us a great cloud of witnesses that surround us – when we have a living relationship with the Saints, as we do with a true friend. And to support this is a whole area of Christian literature known as Lives of the Saints, the catalog of reading which began to form very early in the life of the Church. From Saint Luke, in fact, we have the first efforts toward a life of a Saint in what Luke tells us about Saint Paul, and his journey from persecutor of Christians to pastor of Christians. While few if any of us have quite the dramatic story of Saint Paul in our coming to follow Christ as His disciple, many of us can find ourselves even in Paul’s story if we went through a period of our mature, adult life actively turned away from God, only to have repented and turned to Him, even to have some of Paul’s zeal. And this is the case with the Saints in general: while the diversity of the Saints baffles analysis, we can always admire the lives of the Saints. Why? Because in simple terms: Saints are transparent to Christ. Saints are transparent to Christ in their thoughts, their actions, their feelings. Saints have put on the mind of Christ, in S. Paul’s phrase. And this is because they have allowed the Holy Spirit and His power to act in them: Saints teach us what happens when we cooperate with grace. Thought of in this way, there is so much to admire and imitate in the Saints: a true abundance.For starters, we admire the Saints for their perseverance in the love of Christ and of the Holy Spirit working in and through them. We can imitate the Saint in their love of Christ, their commitment to Holy Scripture, their humility, their hunger and thirst for righteousness, for their ability to love their enemies (and pray for their enemies), and their teaching of Christian stewardship: of their generosity of time, talent, and treasure given to the Church. Saints exemplify what it means to be a “living sacrifice.” Because of the incredible and inspiring witness the Saints offered in their own lives, the Church has always held up the Saints, that in recognizing our fellowship with them, our living communion with them through Christ, the Saints radiate and resonate God’s presence and power to us: the Holy Spirit Who filled them with grace and heavenly benediction flows from their witness and life to us. And hence, knowing that the Lord is glorious in His Saints; that the Saints are transparent to Christ; that the fullness of the faith is preserved in the Saints; and that they resonate the Holy Spirit to other members of Christ’s Body–with confidence in Christ our Saviour, we today ask the Holy Saints of the Church to pray for us, that we made be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

This is for the parishioners of my parish, as a reference of how to chant the Our Father prayer, which we will begin to do during the 10 am Mass this Sunday, 5 November. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

[Note: the audio recording above will vary in places from the prepared text below.]One of the images of Stewardship that I shared last Sunday was to see ourselves as a coin. It comes from a parable Our Lord Jesus told of the kingdom of heaven, in which a woman has ten coins. She loses one – and when it is found, the coin is a cause for rejoicing by her and the angels. As far as the significance and interpretation of this parable, an important and influential voice is that of the 7th century Church Father, S. Gregory the Great, who is a huge influence upon all of western Christianity. Gregory the Great saw the woman as representing Holy Church, the nine coins being the nine orders of Holy Angels, and the tenth coin, the one lost, being humanity, all human beings; lost because of sin. In essence, S. Gregory taught us to understand ourselves as a coin: God’s coin, of immense value because the coin is His; of immense value because He made the coin; of immense value because when it is found, Angels rejoice, and Holy Church rejoices as well.This is all in the context of Our Lord’s teaching to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; and to render unto God that which is God’s. Because Caesar’s image is on the coin the Pharisee’s showed Jesus, the coin goes to Caesar. Yet because God’s image is upon the woman’s tenth coin, and that coin is us, part of what it means to be found is to recognize that we are God’s, and thus we are to give ourselves to God because we are His coin. His image is upon us; we are made in His image. Being made in the image of God is something we hear a lot; and for good reason, for the most part I think. Yet because we hear it so much, its meaning might be obscured. We might then ask: what does it in fact mean to be made in God’s image? And here is where the famous teaching about God being love comes to its primary teaching value. That teaching from Saint John comes in the fourth chapter of his first epistle, verses 7 - 11. John writes, “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Because we know that God so loves us, that He sent His only Son into the world, that we might live through Him: because of this, therefore we know God’s nature is love. Just as it takes one to know one; if we do not love, then we cannot know God; but if we do love, then, John teaches, then and only then are we truly able to know God, and to know that God is love; that is His nature, at least as it has been revealed to us.This is why our Lord Jesus summarizes the Law in the way He does. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” He is asked. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The great commandment, being as it about love, and love in the sense of self-offering, or better, “self-sacrifice,” because when we love with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, this is a complete love, a love of surrendering ourselves to God, a love of holding nothing back, but of giving completely, which is what self-sacrifice means – being as the great commandment is about sacrificial love, we see that it expresses our nature, because in this is our God-given image. We are made, by our nature, with the capacity to love God, in the sense of giving to Him our time, our talent, our treasure. We no more have to be taught how to love God than a newborn has to be taught how to love his or her mother and father; it is innate, it is part of the fabric of the newborn baby; but it is something that the baby, when it grows through the phases of maturation, can forget. So we know how to love God, in the sense that we are made in God’s image which reflects God’s nature which is to love; yet we forget through our lives which become enmeshed in patterns of sin that we know how to love, and in that sense need to be reminded of our original nature, what is called by theologians “original righteousness.” Only Christ reminds us of who we truly are. And to be reminded of who we are comes from loving Christ, who said, “If a man love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”My dear brothers and sisters, let us remember that the image of love in which we are made is not love as it shows up in films, romance novels, or the endless pop songs on permanent shuffle on the playlists of this fallen world. Rather, the image of love in which we are made is that of the Face of Jesus Christ, especially the Face of Christ on the Cross in sacrifice; He who is the Son of David, Whom David addresses as Lord, because the Son of David is the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds. His Face is our original righteousness, the identity at our origin. And what this means is that somewhere buried in us is the Face of Christ, Who is the invisible image of the Father. And how is this Face unburied? How do we regain the likeness to the Face which we lose amid sin? How is this Face known and seen by others? It is by being a living sacrifice in our lives; it is by giving of our whole selves (heart, soul, mind); it is by giving our time, talent, and treasure to God, because to do so is to live up to the highest, most holy version of our self: the image and likeness of Whom we were created to become. Amen. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

[Note: the audio recording above will vary in places from the prepared text below.]On this Stewardship Sunday, I want not only to reflect on Christian Stewardship, but to see ourselves as a coin. In a parable, Our Lord Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a woman with ten coins, who lost one – which when found was a cause for rejoicing by her and the angels. What is the significance of this, you might wonder. It comes from teaching from the 7th century Church Father, S. Gregory the Great, who is a huge influence upon all of western Christianity. He gave his immense voice and interpretation to the Parable of the Lost Coin, seeing the woman as representing Holy Church, the nine coins being the nine orders of Holy Angels, and the tenth coin, the one lost, being humanity, all human beings. In essence, S. Gregory taught to understand ourselves as a coin: God’s coin, of immense value because the coin is His.Yet before I go further with this, let us consider our Gospel passage today. Jesus asks for and is given a coin by the Pharisees. He then asks, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They were trying to entangle Jesus, so that they would have grounds to arrest Jesus, who was a very popular figure in and around Jerusalem. If they could get Jesus to say, “Don’t pay taxes,” then they would have the grounds they were looking for. By this time, Our Lord is quite used to the Pharisees trying to trick Him. And He often responded to their question with another, deeper question, His question undermining their question and disabling it, showing it to be superficial, showing it to be a red herring, a distraction from their real purpose, which was to arrest Him. Jesus asking, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” forced them to answer. Jesus, as they say, put the ball back into their court. Something, unto itself, that can be a teaching to us: when we feel someone is asking what on the surface is an innocuous question, but that we suspect malevolent intent, respond not by answering but by asking a question.What is notable about the particular question our Lord asked was that, for us, it has a deeper significance. In effect, Jesus is asking, “Whose image and writing is this?” The answer to that question, of course, is Caesar’s image and Caesar’s inscription, making it to be a product of the Roman empire. And because of that, the coin goes to Caesar. But, whose image and inscription is written upon us? Are we not in God’s image, and His image in us? Did not God write His law upon us, made in His image? Jeremiah 31:33 records God as declaring: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” So if things are to be given to those whose image is on the thing, then, yes, render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. This is why they marveled: the Pharisees were outdone by the Word of God. And so this idea that human beings are like to a coin lost, searched for, and when found, rejoiced over becomes a key to stewardship in the Christian understanding.We are a coin, made by God. We are God’s coin. God made us so that we would of our free will choose to offer ourselves back to Him, the Maker of all creatures great and small, the maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen. It was what our patron Saint Paul means by being a living sacrifice: and what our Liturgy speaks of, and here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice. To offer to God our time, our talent, and our treasure is simply “our selves, our souls and bodies” put into different words. It is why Saint Luke recorded in the Acts of the Apostles the account of Ananias and his wife Sapphira, who sold a piece of property. They kept back some of the proceeds, and Saint Peter regarded this was Satan filling the heart to lie to the Holy Spirit. We are told by Saint Luke that both fell dead, because of their greed and as well as deception with Holy Church. It is a dramatic story, which comes in the fifth chapter of Acts. It is a dramatic story, but the very least it should teach us is that knowing holding back of our time, talent, and treasure from the Church is something God sees, for God is He unto Whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from Whom no secrets are hid – holding back from the Church that which God knows we have available to offer, but choose not to, God regards negatively, and pulls His active presence away, so as to cause at least spiritual death, which is what we call the way of life in which God pulls His presence away, leaving us cold in our spiritual life.My dear brothers and sisters, as I have said before, and will say undoubtedly many times: All God wants is our heart. When we know that God made us so that we would of our free will choose to offer ourselves back to Him – to offer whatever time, talent, and treasure we have available back to God becomes an expression of who we truly are. And what’s more, to know that we all must one day give account to God, as to whether we have been faithful stewards of the bounty of time, talent, and treasure God has given to us, attests to our true identity. We are God’s coin. Hence, we honor God by our stewardship. We honor the Church by our stewardship. We honor the unfathomable gift of eternal life given to us by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in His Incarnation as well as in His Crucifixion by our stewardship. We are made in God’s image, His image is upon us, and His Holy Spirit is written upon our hearts. We are God’s, that as poor as we might be, we are always able to give Him our heart. Amen. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

[Note: the audio recording above will vary in places from the prepared text below.]I want to reflect today on the first verse from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Church in Philippi. He writes, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” What Paul is talking about is his own devotion to Christ. His devotion to Christ has an intentionality to it—his choosing to “press on”—that is, with effort, a choice to work in the vineyard to harvest fruit, so as to cooperate with the grace given him by the Holy Spirit. Yet we must remember that in reading Paul’s epistles, we are reading his teaching, meant to teach the Church in Philipp, and to teach us: so that others are inspired by him and that they imitate him. By giving examples from his own devotion, he is showing disciples how to follow Our Lord’s commandment to deny oneself, take up one’s cross, and follow Jesus. Paul’s epistles are often him sharing his own technique as to how to follow Jesus, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Paul, like all the Saints, is to be both admired and, when possible, imitated.So what is it that Paul is sharing that we can imitate? His own devotion, by his words, is marked by the characteristic of pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. But specifically, what is Paul describing? He is describing what the Holy Tradition of the Church has often called “Personal Devotion.” Paul’s guidance is to seek a robust Personal Devotion which is our life in the Holy Spirit, day to day. We are called as Paul was called: according to our unique personal characteristics, temperament, life situation, background, and gifts; the Holy Spirit calls us according to our whole personality. We are all members of Christ’s Body, members one of another in Him, but yet united as we are in Christ, we never lose our personality, our uniqueness, our story—we do not lose our identity, but what is transformed is not our identity as much as the horizon of our identity. In our baptism, our commonwealth, our citizenship, is stretched to heaven. This is what Paul is describing when he says “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” He is describing our heavenly citizenship, how he is living into his new horizons as a baptized Christian, and the work it takes to claim for ourselves the gift given to us in Baptism, the work it takes to cooperate with grace.Week by week, we come to the Holy Altar, the summit of our Christian experience. We are fed, we are restored, and most of all, we are loved. And in being dismissed at the end of Mass, we are sent out into the world to continue our service to God in the world. In other words, flowing out of our liturgical experience is our Personal Devotion: our loving of God and neighbor in our day to day, seeking and serving Him in all people and doing so according to the Crucified and Risen Christ revealed in Scripture. Personal Devotion is anything we do that is done for the greater glory of God, and for greater intimacy with Him. Studying Scripture, studying the Saints, and giving to the poor are the classic expressions of personal devotion, but it also includes an innumerable spectrum of activities that bring beauty and goodness into the world: a spectrum ranging from tending a garden to being a responsible citizen; Personal Devotion includes all the ways we donate time, talent and treasure to God, through a charitable cause, through serving the lonely, to being a good listener, a good husband, a good wife, a good parent, a good grandparent, a good teacher, a good person when that adjective “good” always means “loves God” before it means anything else. “Personal devotion” is described in the New Testament, in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, as “continuing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship.” That is Personal Devotion: the ways each of us lead our lives according to the proclamation of the Apostles and according to the Holy Spirit amid our fellowship in our parish. It is anything we do as we walk in God’s ways: as our life is led by God. Personal Devotion, our pressing on toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, means such good works as God has prepared for us to walk in.True Christian spirituality, true Christian devotion, is based on our heavenly citizenship through Baptism. And in our Personal Devotion based on being baptized, we fulfill another of Paul’s teachings: we become stewards of the mysteries of Christ. By our Personal Devotion, we live in the vineyard of God prepared for us. When our devotion to God flows forth from liturgical prayer, we are living by the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God given to us—given to us to be stewards of Christ’s mysteries, stewards of Christ’s sacrificial gift, stewards in the vineyard that bears the fruit of eternal and everlasting life; fruit that comes of our works, fruit that comes of our hands, God ever working through our works, and through our hands, through our words, through our deeds—fruit of beauty and goodness, that others may taste and see the goodness of the Lord, and through us, know God is present. Amen. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

[Note: the audio recording above will vary in places from the prepared text below.]It has become cliché in our days for preachers to observe that among the myriad aspects of the Christian faith and religion, that the angels are among the most misunderstood of all, if not the most misunderstood. And while there are many superficial reasons for that (such as how angels are depicted in motion pictures, television, gift shops, lawn and garden stores – depicted, of course, incorrectly), the ultimate reason for the misunderstanding that surrounds the angels is that human beings and angels are different orders of creation. Creation is a hierarchy, the three orders of which are the visible, the invisible, and the heavenly. In the visible order, human beings are the highest of God’s visible creatures, the most sophisticated and most self-conscious (meaning “conscious of self;” with certain exceptions, we do not understand other animals to possess a great deal of what we call self-consciousness, and this is a great distinction between humans and other animals). And within visible creation, from the stars to animals and vegetation, land and sea, as well as to the microscopic, we humans can see these things, and therefore can begin to try to understand them with precision (or, think we do).Yet if creation is a hierarchy, this visible order for all its wonder, splendor and complexity, is the lowest. Next up the hierarchy is the invisible, and above that is the heavenly order; it is in both these orders that the angels reside. Our burial liturgy affirms our belief that angels take the souls of the faithful departed through the gate of death and into the next phase of life in Christ. Scripture also tells us that certain angels are eternally surrounding the throne of heaven singing “Holy, holy, holy.” Angels are bodiless beings; Scripture tells us that certain angels it seems can temporarily take on the characteristics of human beings, at least in terms of bodily manifestation. Jacob wrestled with an angel; angels appeared to Abraham and Sarah; and depictions of the Annunciation to Our Lady, Blessed Mary, always give Archangel Gabriel a human form. But this is not their true nature, which is bodiless, and moving between the invisible and heavenly orders of creation, and invisibly interacting with the visible order in which we reside.All that said, while angels are not completely ungraspable to us, angels are for the most part quite obscure. The bit we can understand about angels in fact entirely comes from Scripture. And that is a point worth not overlooking. Whatever truth we grasp about Angels only comes through thinking scripturally. And Scripture provides us ample food for thinking about angels. Angels are in the first pages of the first chapters of the first book of the Bible, and in the last pages of the last chapters of the book of the Bible. To celebrate Michael and the Holy Angels today is really to celebrate Scripture, because in Scripture angels are everywhere. In the words of Saint Augustine of Hippo, Church Father who died in the year of our Lord 430, “Holy Scripture descended to us through the ministry of Angels.”And what angels are doing throughout Scripture can be summarized this way: Angels are charged by God with the responsibility of conveying to human beings the certitude in the personal reality of God with Whom a relationship can be established. This is what the angel was doing with Abraham and Sarah; this is what the angel was doing with Jacob; this is what the angel was doing with Blessed Mary; and furthermore, this is what angels were doing with the women at the Tomb early morning on the first Easter Sunday. Each of those episodes have differing content; but what is consistent throughout is that Angels were trying to give those people certitude in the personal reality of God with Whom a relationship can be established. It was an angel, I think we can say, that allowed Nathanael to recognize Jesus as the Son of God, the King of Israel: and so Jesus was led to say, Angels will show you even more than that – much more: angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man!And so, brothers and sisters, the significance of angels is undeniable. It is because of angels that we can come to know, can come to believe, can come to rest in the truth that we can have a personal relationship with God; angels help us to understand that such a thing is even possible: that we can have an intimate relationship with God; that we can come to our Lord with everything, and He will listen. It is because of Angels that we can truly know that all God wants is the human heart; that our hearts can truly be open to God. It is because of Angels that we can truly know that Communion with God is possible: communion with God in our every day lives through prayer and attention, and of course Holy Communion, which is why, as the Liturgy of the Eucharist begins, we say: Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; everything praising Thee, and saying: Holy, holy, holy. Amen. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

“Get behind me Satan” is a heck of a thing for Jesus to say. It is a heck of a thing for Our Lord to say to anyone, I think; but especially shocking for Him to say to Peter, the disciple whose glorious confession Jesus had just praised and responded by proclaiming upon that rock – the rock of Peter’s confession—Christ would build His Church. But now, just a few short verses later in Matthew 16, after Peter said, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you”—referring to Jesus teaching that He would suffer many things, be killed, and on the third day be raised – Jesus said, “Get behind me Satan!” and adding, “You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.” If we were with Jesus and the disciples, hearing all this, would not our heads spin, disoriented as to what is going on?There are two ways I think to understand what Jesus said to Peter (Get behind me Satan). The first is that anyone who gets between Jesus and the Cross is Satan; or put another way, Satan is always trying to get between Jesus and the Cross. Why? So that we do not associate Jesus with the Cross, but instead think of Him in other ways, as a different kind of Messiah that He is: such as a teacher of wisdom; or as someone who speaks truth to power; or a someone one wrongs social injustice; as someone who votes for a particular political party or candidate; and on and on. To take the Cross out of the life of Christ is to remove His identity as the Crucified One, He who offered Himself for us, He Whose strength is perfected in weakness, as Jesus told Saint Paul.Another way to understand what Jesus said to Peter is that Jesus wanted to call his disciples’ attention to the teaching which followed. Our Lord said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” And Jesus added, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?” Certainly the disciples remembered this teaching, for it was recorded by Saint Matthew. Certainly they themselves ruminated on its meaning. What is our Lord after with this teaching? He is certainly aiming to describe what it means to follow Him; therefore what it means to be a disciple, to truly be a Christian person. A great voice of the early centuries of Christianity, the church father Saint Basil the Great who lived in the 300s and was the most prominent voice as the Church became legal under Emperor Constantine, summarized what our Lord desires Christians to be. His teaching included: as disciples of Christ, who pattern themselves on what they see and hear from Jesus; as sheep of Christ, who hearken only to the voice of their shepherd and follow Him; as cuttings grafted onto Christ; as a bride of Christ, being content with the desires of the Bridegroom alone; as holy temples of God, filled only with was is conducive to worship, and, lastly for now, as a sacrifice to God, blameless and unblemished, preserving in all our limbs and members the health of godly piety.That last one really tells the whole story: Christ desires Christians to be as a sacrifice to God. Hence Saint Paul’s teaching to the Church in Rome: “I appeal to you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” The importance of Paul’s teaching is seen both that it takes up over three chapters of his epistle to the Romans, and that it found an important place in Anglican liturgy, during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, when the Priest says on behalf of all gathered: “And here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto Thee.” To offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, even to live sacrificially, is at the beating heart of Christianity.Christ draws us to His state, because He is the perpetual sacrifice and the one who perpetually sacrifices. He does not sacrifice us as objects; rather, He draws us as subjects to self-sacrifice, to an active and lasting self-offering, which makes us share in His sacrificial state, His sacrificial existence. By sharing in His sacrifice, we partake not only of the sacrifice but also we partake of Him Who offers it. We thereby become not just sacrifices but also part of Him who sacrifices. All so that our very person is in a sacrifical state, a state of voluntary self-offering, of active surrendering to God and to God in our fellow human beings—that in all things we may living exclusively according to His will.Dear brothers and sisters, to speak bluntly but truthfully: to not seek to live this way blocks the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our parish. Yet on the other hand, to seek to live this way, to yearn to life this way—to seek to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice which participates in Christ’s full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice which He is always offering—to seek to live this way is the true Christian desire, because through it we become by grace a new creation, able to walk in the newness of life. In this is our spiritual worship; by this comes the transformation by the renewal of our mind; and because of this the Holy Spirit can His appeal to the world, we becoming true agents of grace upon a world that so badly needs the light of Christ. Amen.Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe