Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

I have rarely met a devotional society I didn’t like, though thus far I’ve managed to resist joining all or even most of them. Currently, I’m a member of the North American Province of the Society of Catholic Priests, a pan-Anglican organization for “priests, deacons, and consecrated religious” of all genders that “aims to promote priestly spirituality and catholic evangelism.” Many many many years ago, I joined (for a time) the Guild of All Souls (devoted to prayer for the dead and the promulgation of the ancient doctrine of the Communion of Saints) which spoke both to my little gothic heart and to my growing consciousness of being a catholic-minded Episcopalian. My membership has since lapsed, though I’ve been thinking of re-upping…and then maybe joining the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, the Society of Mary, and most definitely the Society of King Charles the Martyr (the last is, of course, a no-brainer: I love King Saint Charles!). There are also a handful of Benedictine communities/orders I’ve been thinking about, and since some of my ancestors were Masons, I’ve sometimes thought, perhaps….

I think what attracts me to these groups, particularly the devotional groups, is basically twofold. First, they each provide a rule of prayer that serves as a complement to the others, and I’m always interested in ways of deepening or expanding my prayer life. (Also, I’ve been reviewing my own Rule lately so rules of prayer are on my mind.) Second, they provide a clear sense of ecclesiastical identity. Most of the organizations listed above are classic Anglo-Catholic organizations that sprung from the Oxford Movement, or the subsequent Ritualist Movement and its aftermath.

Now…there’s nothing wrong with either of these things. Our prayer is our life, our life is our prayer, and the more deeply we engage in prayer, the more fully we’ll find ourselves living the life Christ desires us to live. And having an ecclesiastical identity or a particular kind of piety and celebrating it is certainly not horrible.

But here’s the thing with regard to ecclesiastical identity: it can distract from what’s important. Because the reality is that it’s not important in itself to be high church or low church or broad church, not important to be Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical. What’s important is to find one’s identity fundamentally rooted in Jesus. What’s important is to be part of the Body of Christ. What’s important is to bear the Love of Christ to the world. What’s important is Jesus. All that other stuff, high low broad whatever, is nice, can be expressions of this fundamental identity found in Christ, can channel the energies of that identity in wonderful ways...but they’re not what’s fundamental. Jesus is what’s fundamental. Identifying as an Anglo-Catholic or an Evangelical won’t save your soul. But Jesus will, if you let him.

This is much of what Saint Paul says in our Office Epistle today. Folks in Corinth are identifying not as Christ’s but as Paul’s or as Apollos’; identifying as a particular flavor of Christian witness; identifying with a messenger, but not the messenger’s Word. So Paul reminds the people: Jesus is your foundation, not Paul or Apollos, not the Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical Movements, not this or that Society or Confraternity. Jesus is your foundation.

The beautiful thing about the Church is that the Body of Christ has a diversity of members, all of which are important to the Body’s work in the world. Some have one sort of piety, others another. Some have this sort of gift, others that sort. Our gifts and our piety (which really describe the shape of our life of prayer) are all very important to our identity, but Christ is foundational. If we’re rooted in Christ, we can actually discover our identities more fully, and also discover ourselves able to celebrate the identities of others in Christ.

I think that one of the reasons why I’ve thus far resisted levelling up my Anglo-Catholic credentials is that I don’t want to miss the plot. I don’t want to confuse what’s fundamentally important with what’s important only by virtue of its relationship to that foundation. That’s not to say you shouldn’t join as many devotional societies as you can manage, or that one day I won’t dive into a few more myself.

But for now, in this season of my life—and maybe you and I, dear Friend, are in a similar season—for now, I feel it’s important for me to remember what’s fundamental: the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+