Fr Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

They were not necessarily anything grand. Her ministry had been covert and not grandiose from the start. She had been licensed to perform the eucharist as a deaconess. She had snuck across enemy lines during wartime to get ordained to the priesthood by her bishop. He was committed to the idea “that no prejudices should prevent the congregations committed to my care having the sacraments of the Church” even if he was generally against the ordination of women to the priesthood. Much later she would renounce her license in the church to celebrate the eucharist, but she would never renounce her priesthood. However, years before that she is looking down at some vestments, not necessarily grand, but hers. The only vestments of the only Anglican priest in China, her vestments, are on a table before her and there are scissors in her hand and Red Guards watching her. Florence Li Tim-Oi begins to destroy her vestments, these particularly grand vestments.

In the next era of her life, as she was sent to re-education camps and forced labor, she forsook any contact with her congregation. In fear that even seeing them would cause them trouble, she would not dare gather with groups for prayer. She went out into the mountains and in solitude she prayed for the strength to live through another week, another day, another hour. These prayers held her through the darkest years of her life….

Florence Li Tim-Oi was ordained thirty years before the Anglican Communion began to value the vocations of women to the priesthood. The reality that no prejudice should be involved in the celebration of the sacraments and our life as community is still a lesson we need to learn. There is reason that our minds, when we think of Florence Li Tim-Oi, go quickly to the fact she was the first woman whose vocation to the priesthood the Anglican Communion acknowledged. When we come to her feast day, however, we should understand how this is only the starting point of her priestly life and in many ways not the most remarkable moment of it. 

We should be with Florence Li Tim-Oi today as we celebrate how prejudice was vanquished and the sacraments were provided more fully to God’s people. We also need to be with her in that moment where she is forced to cut her own vestments, those moments where she is praying alone and brokenhearted in the mountains, those moments when she is too afraid to reach out to Christian Community for fear of harming her flock. Florence needs us to be with her amidst both those realities when we celebrate her life. The clergy and lay ministers who face oppression and marginalization within our church and our communities need us to be with them in both places in the here and now.

Pax,

—Ben