A Big Day

My March 4-5 went something like this:

1) I got the keys for the townhome I'm renting in Godfrey. My place is, by looking towards the back door, the left-most of the units of the four-plex. I spent the night.

2) As I was arriving at a local restaurant for a Fat Tuesday pancake breakfast (I elected to not celebrate Pancake Day at the International House of Pancakes}), Sebastian (my 2002 VW Golf

TDI) reached 200,000 miles. Breakfast was delicious.

3) I signed up for cable TV -- I've never paid for TV before -- and internet, so I've now got all the home utilities ordered. Hopefully everything not yet on -- water and heat were already a-ok -- will

be installed by Friday. So it's back to Peoria to continue packing. But I'm not leaving the new place completely empty. And, since the Seraphs won their Spring Training game, beating the Cubs 9-2 in warm Tempe, Arizona, the Angels bobblehead legitimately gets to show his face in joy.

Here's to new ventures in 2019!

When I Was a Scholar

[Originally posted in May 2017 on the Pacific Coast league 1930-1960 Facebook group, responding to this photo of the original editions of Richard E. Beverage's books on the Hollywood Stars and Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. spt+]

The Stars book I bought in the early '80s directly from Richard Beverage through the mail, but when I inquired about the Angels book, it was long out-of-print and he had none available. Occasionally I'd inquire at used book stores in the San Fernando Valley, but no luck. In 1988 I headed up to the Lutheran seminary, which has graduate student privileges at Cal.

So in a University library one day on a lark I looked up "The Angels" and, sure enough, they had one copy -- at the Bancroft Library. That's a non-circulating, research library. No checking out books. You can't even go in the stacks to see it. One of the librarians gets it for you. You aren't allowed pens or pencils, even to make notes (they will make copies for a fee), and you don't leave until you return it. And they don't do this for just anybody, even a graduate student, holding a Cal library card. No you have to first register as a researcher, completing a form that remains on file declaring to the Bancroft who you are and your field of study! Gee, I just want to read something about the team my dad fell in love with when he was a boy.

Then it hit me -- I'm a divinity student at the Graduate Theological Union. And so I put down that I was researching angels. And I got to read the book.

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Luther Reed in The Lutheran Liturgy writes that the feast of St. Michael and All Angels commemorates the dedication, on a 29th of September sometime in the 5th century, of a small basilica on the Via Salaria, near Rome, the first church in Italy dedicated in honor of the Archangel Michael. In England Michaelmas is the traditional beginning of the Fall terms of courts and universities.

O everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant, that as thy holy Angels alway do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succor and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(The Book of Common Prayer [1662] of the Church of England)

Deus qui miro ordine angelorum ministeria hominumque dispensas: concede propitius vt a quibus tibi ministrantibus in caelo semper assistitur: ab his in terra vita nostra muniatur. Per dominum.
                Gregorian

The STS at Worship

I just learned about this video snip from the opening Eucharist at last Fall's General Retreat of the Society of the Holy Trinity that's been on YouTube. The setting is the Chapel at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary for the Feast of St. Michael and All Saints 2009 as we are singing the grand hymn, "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones".



In case you're wondering, you can see me in my alb (I'm the Thurifer) standing near the Processional Cross which is to the the right-side (from the viewer's perspective) of the Altar.

The Angels (cont'd)

From the Society of the Holy Trinity's General Retreat

The sermon for Michaelmas proclaimed by Pr. Pari Bailey, STS, at the Society of the Holy Trinity's General Retreat that I mentioned a few days ago is now posted on the Society's website.

We've got angels. Boy, do we. There are angels of the month, birthstone angels, dashboard charms that say, "Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly." Bumper stickers that proclaim, "Angels on board." There are gardening angels, Mother's Day angels, Hallmark angels holding everything from Thanksgiving turkeys to St. Patrick's Day shamrocks.

Fat blonde babies with wings cavort on every possible item. Chubby cherubs, swathed in Victorian chintz drapery, halos charmingly askew, look more like spun-sugar dumplings than anything that would cry, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty!" Greeting cards, wallpaper, candy bars, movies like "Angels in America"— feathered wings joined with human fallibilities are just everywhere these days!

But then there's this:

Rank on rank the host of heaven spreads its vanguard on the way
As the Lord of light descending from the realms of endless day
Comes, the pow'rs of hell to vanquish
As the darkness clears away.

Set them side by side, the post-modern depiction of angels as a pleasant remnant of myth, made in our image, bent to our will, filling desire for spirituality and a crass marketing niche all at once —and then the Scriptural image of the vanguard of the army of heaven, the praises of God in their throats and a two-edged sword in their hands, a choir in battle formation, with captains and princes, standards and banners arrayed around the throne of the Lord of Light.

Singers with shields, messengers, bringers of the divine Word, some appointed to ceaseless praise, some appointed to help us on earth: these are the angels of the Lord.

The cosmology of the ancient world is not ours—or so we think. We no longer see angels behind every physical force of nature, every unexplained scientific phenomenon. Except for the Left Behind crowd and the devotees of Frank Peretti and those who tend to see the world in terms of Star Wars, anyway—most Christians, and certainly most Lutherans, don't describe our reality with reference to a cosmic battleground between the evenly-matched forces of good and evil. We already know what battle standard the Host of heaven carries, what device is blazoned on every shield and breastplate, in what sign they conquer.

Whether our modern sensibilities accept it or not, the holy angels are not incidental to, or independent from, the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ. In the might of the Messiah and under the banner of the cross, the host of heaven continues to do God's will and bring his Word despite the death throes of the dragon. The war is over, Satan is finished. Cast down. But still he fights on, mortally wounded, utterly defeated. His time is short.

For the entire sermon, click on this page or on the STS site the link for the St. Michael's Day Sermon.

The Angels

The day that has just past was the festival of St. Michael and All Angels (aka Michaelmas). We celebrated the festival a day early at the closing Eucharist for the STS General Retreat, where Pr. Pari Bailey, STS, preached about the place angels in our culture and in the Christian Faith. I will soon post a copy of that sermon on the STS website, but until then I suggest that you check out The Confessing Reader where you will find -- as you will for nearly every Christian festival that included in the Calendar of the Book of Common Prayer -- a good and faithful description of angels in the Holy Scriptures and Christian tradition.

As the depiction here (taken shamelessly from The Confessing Reader's blog entry) of St. Michael suggests, the angels of God are not the harmless, cute beings in the "angels" section of gift shops, on greeting cards, or in popular American culture. I daresay that images of angels you might find in your local "Christian" bookstore or in a church's children's pageant won't be in line with this photo, either. But ponder upon the first words so often spoken by an angel in the Bible: "Do not be afraid."