Fr Matthew Reese

“Teach me thy way, O Lord, and I will walk in thy truth: *
O knit my heart unto thee, that I may fear thy Name.”
—Psalm 86:11

Friends in Christ,

This morning’s Psalm (86:11-17) begins with the wonderful phrase “O knit my heart unto thee.” The verb in Hebrew is more commonly translated as “unite my heart” (as in the KJV, RSV, and NRSV). But the Coverdale translation of the Psalms––and our own 1979 Psalter which departs from it––use the much more evocative verb “to knit.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about that word recently.

Being “knit together” is a theme which occurs in a number of our liturgies. We find it in the Marriage Rite: “Grant that their wills may be so knit together in your will…” We find it, similarly, in the Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child. And perhaps most importantly, we find it in the Burial Rite and in the prayers for All Saints:

Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant, we beseech thee, to thy whole Church in paradise and on earth, thy light and thy peace. Amen. (BCP 480).

We often speak of the Faith and of the Church as a kind of tapestry. We are woven or knit into it. It is something which tells a story. Its individual strands are inextricable from one another. The metaphor of weaving or knitting pervades Scripture, certainly, but this is not just a literary device.

There is also a very practical Christian interest in textiles. We weave altar linens to look like burial shrouds. Our Sacred Ministers wear embroidered vestments. We receive the Eucharist on beautiful, needle-point kneelers––the product of hundreds of hours of skilled labor. Saint Philip’s is blessed by the work of many such artisans, particularly our Fiber Guild, who began decades ago on that very project.

Shortly before Magdalene was born, we received several beautiful textiles from the people of this parish. A prayer shawl, a quilt, all sorts of other little linens for the caretaking of a baby.

One was knit by a wonderful parishioner in her 90s––a woman who, as a little girl, had been an evacuee from central London during the Blitz. Her name is subtly, almost imperceptibly, sewn into a hem of the shawl.

This gifted artisan died last Saturday morning, and though she has gone on to her reward, I take comfort in the knowledge that we are never truly separated from one another, and that there is but a veil between the living and the dead. We are, all of us, “knit together with God’s elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of His Son Christ our Lord.”

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew