Archbishop and Pope

In the upstairs hall of our church, there is a photograph of the Most Reverend and Right Honorable Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, with a handwritten note of greeting to our parish inscribed on it. This photograph from the Archbishop gives me hope, especially on bad days in the parish. It reminds me that my little bit of work in this place is in communion with the much larger work of Anglicans in places of infinite variety around the world, large and small.

I am glad that Rowan and Benedict, the Bishop of Rome, have become, to all appearances, personal friends, with a shared recognition of their task of Christian witness in an unbelieving world. I hold both of them in high regard, and wish them God's grace and blessings in all that they undertake.

In this light, the Pope's recent visit to Great Britain was for me a source of unalloyed joy, culminating in the Choral Evensong at Westminster Abbey on Friday. Here is the Order of Service; it is worthy of examination as a window into what must have been a splendid occasion.

Some impressions:

- One does not often have an Order of Procession like this (page 8), including the sixth-century illuminated Gospel book brought to Canterbury by its first Archbishop, and concluding with the Pope and Archbishop and their chaplains, all entering to "Christ is made the sure foundation" to the tune Westminster Abbey, in the building for which it was named and where its composer was Organist.

- I am glad that we Anglicans presented ourselves at our best: Choral Evensong in one of the great churches of the world. The service of Choral Evensong, with the musical repertoire that has developed for it, is the unique gift of the Anglican Communion to Christendom.

- The musical selections could not have been better, from the list of organ voluntaries before the service (page 4) and the anthems by Byrd, Stanford and Tallis (page 6-7) to the hymns and Psalm, and Stanford in A for the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, and Duruflé's Ubi caritas as the Anthem, topped off with Bach's Komm, heiliger Geist as the first of two concluding voluntaries. We have sung some of this music in our parish choir, and I have played some of the voluntaries; this music is thoroughly representative of our tradition.

- The Service was a reminder that the Choral Office is ecumenical in a way that the Holy Eucharist cannot be. We differ on many things, but we can pray together, and sing together.

- The address given by the Holy Father was an inspiration to me. Using the processional hymn as a springboard, he spoke of Christ as the source of all Christian unity:

"Our commitment to Christian unity is born of nothing less than our faith in Christ, in this Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. It is the reality of Christ's person, his saving work and above all the historical fact of his resurrection, which is the content of the apostolic kerygma and those credal formulas which, beginning in the New Testament itself, have guaranteed the integrity of its transmission. The Church's unity, in a word, can never be other than a unity in the apostolic faith, in the faith entrusted to each new member of the Body of Christ during the rite of Baptism. It is this faith which unites us to the Lord, makes us sharers in his Holy Spirit, and thus, even now, sharers in the life of the Blessed Trinity, the model of the Church's koinonia here below. . . ."

"Fidelity to the word of God, precisely because it is a true word, demands of us an obedience which leads us together to a deeper understanding of the Lord's will, an obedience which must be free of intellectual conformism or facile accommodation to the spirit of the age. This is the word of encouragement which I wish to leave with you this evening, and I do so in fidelity to my ministry as the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Saint Peter, charged with a particular care for the unity of Christ's flock."

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In perusing the Holy Father's other speeches during his visit, I found this, in his address to the people of St. Peter's Residence, a home for the elderly in London:

"Those of us who live many years are given a marvellous chance to deepen our awareness of the mystery of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity. . . . [O]ur physical capacities are often diminished; and yet these times may well be among the most spiritually fruitful years of our lives. These years are an opportunity to remember in affectionate prayer all those whom we have cherished in this life, and to place all that we have personally been and done before the mercy and tenderness of God. This will surely be a great spiritual comfort and enable us to discover anew his love and goodness all the days of our life."

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In our little parish church, far removed from Westminster Abbey in almost every possible respect, we had a good choral service this morning. The choir sang verses from Psalm 79 to Tone IV, capturing the dark intensity of these words:

O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance;
they have profaned your holy temple *
they have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble.

They have given the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of the air, *
and the flesh of your faithful ones to the beast of the field. . . .

They later sang "There is a balm in Gilead" in the fine arrangement by William Dawson, in a manner that was fully committed to this great Spiritual, communicating that being a Christian is something that demands everything from us, and is in turn our only refuge and help, the "balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole." In our own way, we gave testimony this morning to "our faith in Christ, in this Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead."

It is as we worship and serve this our Lord Jesus Christ, looking to Him alone, that we are one. We must hold on to this.