Fr Peter Helman

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”

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Dear friends,

I wonder if John the Baptist goes far enough in both directions with his admission "He must increase, but I must decrease.” We read this in the gospel appointed for Morning Prayer today, of the brief scene of John speaking with his confused disciples and reflecting with them on the ministry of Jesus as it grows.

Is it not the more honest and perhaps difficult admission that John—and you and I with him—must be wholly self-effaced by the movement of God's Spirit, swallowed up by the fullness of Christ's life who fills all in all?

In truth, the work of love that Jesus has come to do in the world and in our hearts leaves no room for ambition. To follow Jesus, who is our Way, is to be given, body and soul, to the pursuit of him, to lay ourselves aside so that whatever there is within us that is not of God may be seen for what it is and redeemed and made new by the fullness of Christ’s love and truth.

We pray as much at Morning Prayer with the words of the General Thanksgiving:

"...we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful; and that we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord. ..." (BCP 59)

Our feet only begin to stand in the right way when we find we have no place to stand at all but only in and with Christ in the places where he stands and alongside those with whom he stands.

And so we make this morning, rising from bed, a simple prayer:

“I praise my God this day:
I give myself to God this day:
I ask God to help me this day”
(Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book 1967, pg. 13)

If to follow Christ is to live no longer for ourselves but for Christ, we must first and always and only ask, "How then shall I live?"


Peace,
Peter+