Fr Peter Helman

"Thus saith the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity whose name is Holy, "I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." 

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Beloved,

There is a collect found in the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, the Collect for Peace, that opens with an equally stunning and curious invocation and acknowledgement: “O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom…” (BCP pg. 57). I wonder what you think: How does knowledge of God save us, bind us to God in servitude, and in that knowledge set us utterly free and at peace? 

A friend and I talked at some length recently about this very collect. She had several helpful thoughts that go me thinking. She said the knowledge the collect has in view is less about the acquisition and analysis of pertinent facts about God—as though thinking about God as a scientific experiment gives us control over God—and more about the strange sort of knowledge that flows from loving relationship with God and that inextricably binds the lover and beloved one to another. God loves us, and we are bound to God in that love.

We are bound to God in several ways. She suggested that simply to exist, to live and move and have being, is to know and be bound to God. We are contingent creatures. None of us has life in ourselves. Our very lives raise a question, point us beyond ourselves to that which is logically prior to everything, the primary and uncreated movement of divine love that fashioned all things from nothing and sustains our lives in every moment. We dwell in the shadow of the Most High, always in relationship to the One in whom and to whom and through whom are all things.

In another sense, we are bound to God by the consequences of our actions, by the ability to know and choose that which is our greatest good, whether to give ourselves to the One who gives to all things life and breath and all things, or not. We are free to follow and free also to turn aside. And the direction of our turning, toward God or toward the devices of our own hearts, brings either true liberty or a self-imposed diminution of the soul.

To know God is to admit that we are not our own and to know that even what we count as possession is, in fact, received from God as pure gift. Our lives are pure gift. To know God is to confront a vocation, a calling, set deep within our hearts and common to all, to die to self and be given back to God for whatever purposes God intends.

Whatever we are and aspire to be in this world will mean very little if we live for ourselves alone. We are made for so much more, to know and love the one who made the Pleiades and Orion, who wills to be found. Today let us make every effort humbly to lay hold of salvation, to bind unto ourselves the name of God, the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy.


Yours in Christ,

Peter+