Showing items filed under “The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin”

Trinity's Day

 

The coincidence of Trinity Sunday with Fathers’ Day is just too good to pass up. We’ve had other delightful conjunctions in recent years, with (to my mind) the best being Easter Day falling on April 1. The forces of evil think they have brought the innocent Jesus into their kingdom, the anti-kingdom of death. But on the third day—surprise! The fools learn that their kingdom cannot imprison the Son.

By the time we get to Trinity Sunday, everything has been wrapped up. The Father has sent his Son into the world, to live a fully human life. This began with the Annunciation and was manifest at Christmas and Epiphany and all that followed. The Son was betrayed and executed; dead as a doornail, buried in a tomb, he rose to new life on the third day. In due course he ascended to heaven and assumed his place of ruler over the universe. On the cross, his kingdom had been inaugurated; at the right hand of the Father, it was consummated. One of his first kingly acts was a gift of patronage: he gave to his people the Holy Spirit, to be with them until he returns in person at the end.

That’s the story from our end. The Father is the source of it all; the Son is the central character of the action; the Holy Spirit is the bearer of God’s ultimate future. So as I say, when we get to Trinity Sunday, everything has been wrapped up—everything about God, that is. We are awaiting the ultimate wrap-up when our Lord comes to judge the living and the dead, a decisive future turning point after which there will be only his kingdom—that is to say, no other kingdoms—and his kingdom will continue forever, without end.

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Now of course God the Father is not a man and we don’t analogize from our experience of fathers up to God. In truth, the analogy works the other way: from God to us. Whatever is good about any particular father is from God—and the same, of course, is true of any particular mother. Indeed, any goodness in the world is a place where we meet something that is from God—and since it is from God, it points us to something about God, something that is ever beyond our grasp to understand. A good apple, a beautiful sunset, a well-designed building, a well-played baseball game: all show us something about God. And so if Trinity Sunday were coincident with the World Series final or if it fell on National Apple Day or if there were a convention of architects on Trinity Sunday—we could make the same point. 

(Have I told you my baseball analogy? The Father is the pitcher . . .)

Make Trinity Sunday coincident with the celebration of something good and needful, and you will see: God is the source of that created goodness. God incarnate shared that goodness by virtue of his solidarity with every human being. And God the Spirit is bringing that goodness to the perfection of all things at the end of all things.

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Out & About. Once more with feeling: I’m recommending to everyone within earshot as a book to read this summer: Nicolas Diat, A Time to Die: Monks on the Threshold of Eternal Life. Diat is a Catholic journalist who, not many years ago, visited several monasteries in France with the question of how monks die. The monasteries differed, but all of them showed something of what holy dying might be. I hope you read it—and if you do, you’re welcome to the first Good Books & Good Talk seminar this fall in Dallas on Sunday, September 14, which, appropriately enough, is the feast of the Holy Cross. 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

Tower and Temple Turn to Dust

 

When I’m walking, I like to have something in my mind, something that’s there for me to attend to consciously and unconsciously. When you walk, your mind goes from practical things like how to navigate things on the path to bigger things; the back-and-forth is helpful. This is one of the values of having a few memorized prayers—they are right there, available anytime. (And you don’t need to plug up your ears to think of them!) Preparing to walk the Camino a few years ago, I started memorizing two of the canticles from Morning Prayer. One of them starts, “Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our fathers, * praised and exalted above all for ever.” It’s a great sentence to say anytime. I wrote out these canticles and carried these on a small card in my pocket, so that when my recall got stuck, I could pull it out. Eventually, of course, I lost the card (but still remember most of those two canticles).

More recently, I’ve seen value in memorizing hymns. These are more complex than prayers or canticles, especially if they have several stanzas. Thus memorizing takes more focus and more time. I’ve been working on a couple of hymns for the past year. (You could probably learn them faster than I, but hey, you are younger than I am!)

One of them is the glorious “All My Hope on God Is Founded.” This was the favorite hymn of my first rector, and as a consequence we sang it frequently. It has a big, vigorous tune named Michael, and it didn’t hurt that the same was my rector’s name. 

It is the second stanza that came into my mind, about a year ago, when I learned sad news about a once-great church institution. The hymn line that came to mind is the subject line of this blog: “Tower and temple turn to dust.” “Tower” stands for our proud human achievements and “temple” for our religious monuments. None of these will last.

The whole stanza in its original language runs as follows:

 

    Pride of man and earthly glory,

    Sword and crown betray his trust:

    What with care and toil he buildeth,

    Tower and temple, fall to dust.

    But God’s power, hour by hour,

    Is my temple and my tower.

 

One notices a shift from “his” in the second line, which refers to “man” in the first and means all (fallen, prideful) human beings, to “my” in the last line, repeated twice. The fourth line has the “tower and temple” that human pride has built for earthly glory. These things “betray” the trust that humanity puts in them, no matter the “care and toil” that goes into their building. So the first four lines all together are quite dismal, sober: in time, everything is going to decay and be lost. This applies to buildings, even churches; it applies to “sword and crown,” our political achievements, our military strength, perhaps even our national identity: all will pass away. What then? Should we do nothing? 

No. There is a distinction between “his” of line 2 and “my” of line 6. Even when all else passes away, there stands “my temple and my tower.” The singer, the poet, is making a profession of faith. The singer knows a power that persists, “hour by hour,” and continues unfailingly to support the singer every hour. What is that power? It is God’s power, which is to say, it is God. What does that power give to the singer? “My temple and my tower.”

It is a powerful ending: powerful poetically, powerful musically, but of greatest importance, powerful spiritually. Whatever happens in this world, the believer can nonetheless say: “God’s power, hour by hour, is my temple and my tower.”

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You can find this hymn in various places online—and of course in hymnals. If you don’t know the tune Michael here is one source (with lyrics for four of the stanzas): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AL9g6GbWYo

Happy memorizing!

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Out & About. I’m recommending to everyone within earshot as a book to read this summer: Nicolas Diat, A Time to Die: Monks on the Threshold of Eternal Life. Diat is a Catholic journalist who, not many years ago, visited several monasteries in France with the question of how monks die. The monasteries differed, but all of them showed something of what holy dying might be. I hope you read it—and if you do, you’re welcome to the first Good Books & Good Talk seminar this fall in Dallas on Sunday, September 14, which, appropriately enough, is the feast of the Holy Cross. 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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