Welcome to St Mary's the Virgin
The new Archbishop skirted our parish in her walk from Southwark to her enthronement in Canterbury itself. In earlier times, for most of our arch and other bishops, Canterbury was their starting point since they arrived from overseas. One such was Anselm, whose feast day falls this week.
Anselm grew up in Burgundy and after being refused entry to the monastic life at the age of fifteen, lived what his biographers call a ‘carefree life’ until he reached Normandy in 1059. It was ‘interesting times’ in Normandy as the 1060’s approached; here Anselm met Lanfranc who would become the first Archbishop of Canterbury after William’s conquest of 1066. Lanfranc encouraged Anselm to fully engage his intellect with his belief: Anselm became one of the great early (‘post-patristic’ if you want to conversationally impress visiting clergy) theological philosophers.
Anselm specialised in what is called ontological philosophy; the study of reality. Your initial reaction gentle reader, may be to ask, “What else is there to study?” but consider the world we inhabit, full of false flags, fake news and that frightening oxymoron, virtual reality. Anselm founded his thinking in the world he could see, touch and feel, physically and mentally.
Confronted with Easter morning, the apostle Thomas (who wasn’t there) did the same – show me! At the heart of our faith is an historical event which challenges our concept of reality: not simply that death is not the end, but that death is defeated. Anselm was confident that our experience and engagement with the truth of who and how we are in the world we exist in naturally engenders and encourages a relationship with the living being who undergirds it all: not because God is an idea of our own, but because true engagement with reality implies a benevolent, even loving, creative force behind it all.
So, as you pray for Sarah our new Archbishop remember Anselm her predecessor and ask that, like him, she is granted grace to engage with the world as it is and point to where we can see the Almighty at work. Pray the same for you.
Fr Neil.
Addendum – many thanks to those readers who have asked me what the explanatory footnote to “Blessedly this did not bring forth a spontaneous rendition of Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer’* ” in last month’s article would have been. The below was inadvertently omitted.
*the chorus of the song begins “Oh-oh, we’re halfway there; Woh-oh – living on a prayer…” and is sung by England cricket fans whenever the national side reach half of the required runs total to win a match. To be fair, the current side have been really quite good at achieving this.
