Father David channeling his inner 16th century Theologian for our first class meeting on 09/19/2023.
Why teach church history?
One of the roles of a bishop is to be a keeper of tradition—The Sacred Tradition if you will—and to pass that Sacred Tradition along to the generations that follow. This, in some ways, is what the so-called Apostolic Tradition/Apostolic Succession is all about. While some may interpret it more magically as a passing along of certain powers—a channeling of the Holy Spirit if you will—it is more than just passing along power to do thigs; it is also passing along the tradition of why we do these things, how we do these things, and how what we do today connects us to what Jesus and The Twelve—i.e., the Apostles—did back then.
While white Americans seem to have lost touch with “The Ancestors,” other cultures that make up the people of our nation have an understanding of how important it is to do what we have always done and why we have always done it because of those who have gone before us and what they have lived and taught. There is a sense of cumulative experience—a sense that what has happened to our forebears is somehow programmed into our DNA if not just some kind of collective memory.
The old joke about the proper church answer to any kind of change—“We’ve never done it that way before”—has more wisdom in it than just a commentary of people being afraid of change. Sometimes we lose things in the changing just for the sake of change that are of great value.
And while we need to adapt new ways of doing things to speak to a new generation we also need to be careful not to “throw the baby out with the bath water” which itself is an old expression that comes down to us from a historical reality.
While white Americans seem to have lost touch with “The Ancestors,” other cultures that make up the people of our nation have an understanding of how important it is to do what we have always done and why we have always done it because of those who have gone before us and what they have lived and taught. There is a sense of cumulative experience—a sense that what has happened to our forebears is somehow programmed into our DNA if not just some kind of collective memory.
The old joke about the proper church answer to any kind of change—“We’ve never done it that way before”—has more wisdom in it than just a commentary of people being afraid of change. Sometimes we lose things in the changing just for the sake of change that are of great value.
And while we need to adapt new ways of doing things to speak to a new generation we also need to be careful not to “throw the baby out with the bath water” which itself is an old expression that comes down to us from a historical reality.
The Litany of the Saints
In catholic tradition, every baptism, ordination and or religious profession has some variation of the Litany of the Saints. Back when I prepared the bulletin for my own priestly ordination (1990) I explained the chanting of the Litany of the Saints in the words of Saint Simeon the New Theologian (949-1022) as quoted in The Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia in Phrygia (nee Timothy Ware, 1934-2022).
Saint Simeon, likened the Communion of Saints to a golden chain that spiraled through time connecting one generation to the next as well as to the one before. In the Litany—or for that matter any invocation of the saints--there is a connection all the way back to the beginnings of the Church, or at least to an earlier time, and all the way forward into the Church that will continue beyond us.
The Litany of the Saints serves to remind us today that we are not inventing something new; rather we are connected to something ancient and solid even as it is vibrant and always growing, always developing.
In other words … it connects us to our “Ancestors in the Faith.” And, that is the theme I would like us to carry along on this journey through Church History.
Saint Simeon, likened the Communion of Saints to a golden chain that spiraled through time connecting one generation to the next as well as to the one before. In the Litany—or for that matter any invocation of the saints--there is a connection all the way back to the beginnings of the Church, or at least to an earlier time, and all the way forward into the Church that will continue beyond us.
The Litany of the Saints serves to remind us today that we are not inventing something new; rather we are connected to something ancient and solid even as it is vibrant and always growing, always developing.
In other words … it connects us to our “Ancestors in the Faith.” And, that is the theme I would like us to carry along on this journey through Church History.