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I’ve been reviewing reader/viewer comments and various email message concerning the Anglican Internet Church, particularly its various presences on the Web.  Two common threads, not actually spoken, are Why the Seasonal Videos; Why the Focus on the 1928 B.C.P.?; and Why No Actual Video of the author?   I hope the following provides readers/viewer with acceptable answers.

Seasonal Videos:  One of the original objectives of the AIC, when it was just the broadcast arm of St. John Chrysostom Anglican Church at St. Joseph’s Villa Chapel, Richmond, VA, was to extend the reach of traditional homilies and traditional local doctrinal teaching and Bible Study.  Today, the AIC reaches a broad audience in many parts of the world.  The Seasonal Videos, which will eventually include programs on the entire Church Calendar, offer viewers and listeners through the Podcast version, are a way of providing traditional teaching, easily-available, without either going over the heads of the viewers or insulting their intelligence — and giving them a glimpse of the treasures of Church art from both the Western and Eastern Church.

Why the B.C.P. Focus:  The greatest treasure left to Anglicans by the English Reformation is the American 1928 Book of Common Prayer (as amended in the 1940s).  The liturgies provided, especially for Holy Communion, provide a valuable link backwards in time to the early Church both at Rome and at Constantinople and at Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and the many Christian communities throughout Asia Minor.  Every time an Anglican hears a Collect read he or she is reminded of the continuity of the Christian heritage which came down from the Apostles through the clergy, bishops, and archbishops who defended the Nicene Creed in the face of “reform” movements.  The Seasonal Videos, with their focus on how the Calendar is brought to life in Holy Communion or Morning Prayer, help Anglicans understand exactly where these beliefs came from, including the source of the Collects; provide the short summaries of the Epistle and Gospel readings, with appropriate religious art; and enrich the experience with commentary on appropriate Seasonal Music from The St. Chrysostom Hymnal, which is offered as a supplement to the 1940 Hymnal.

Why No Actual Videos of the Author:   All our video series, whether in the Bible Study, Seasonal, or Christian Education categories, are intended to keep the focus on the content.   Nothing would be gained by watching the author while he narrates a video.  In fact, I believe, such video content would take time away from both the Script and the extensive archive of icons, frescoes, mosaics, engravings, paintings, watercolors, illuminated manuscripts, bas reliefs, statues, monuments, and church buildings, all of which, I hope, leave the viewer reminded that 21st C. Christians are not alone!  We are part of a continuing legacy begun by the teaching, healing, preaching, Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and by the untiring work of His Apostles, whether of the 1st C., or the 4th when the Nicene  Creed was written; or the 5th-6th-7th-8th C. when most of the Collects were composed; or in all the intervening years until the 21st C.  That legacy remains alive, vibrant, and threatening to the secular world as long as modern day Christians continue to worship God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, constantly reminded by the words of the liturgies spoken by millions of Christians who have come before us.

As always, thank you for your interest and support.  May God continue to bless you in all that you do in His Name!  Amen!

Glory be to God for all things!  Amen!

The long-delayed Episode Six in the AIC Christian Education video series The War on Christianity is now online in both video and podcast versions.   Subtitled “The First Line of Defense,” the episode is focused on Part One of the Te Deum Laudamus canticle (from the opening sentence to “also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter”).  The episode includes a summary of the canticle’s history and a verse-by-verse commentary on its meaning and Scriptural warrant, with illustrations from the 6th through the 21st C.  This powerful and inspiring Canticle is the first suggested Canticle (or “Hymn” in the rubric in page 10) following the First Lesson in Morning Prayer.

The Te Deum Laudamus, so named after its first words in Latin, meaning We praise Thee, O God, is among the very best summaries of the most essential doctrines of Christianity — everything from angels, cherubim and seraphim; martyrs and apostles; to the Holy Spirit.   The slides include an annotated version of the text with emphasis and pause indicators.  To save time in the presentation, the text is read rather than chanted.   This episode is the first of several on the concept of understanding the teachings of the Church as the best “first line of defense” for individual Christians in the secular world’s on-going War on Christianity.

Watch Episode Six.    Listen to the Podcast of Episode Six.

Episode Seven, focused on Parts Two and Three, will be uploaded later in February or in the first full week of March.

As always, thank you for your interest in and support of The Anglican Internet Church’s online ministry.  You can help expand our reach by subscribing to this Blog by clicking the “Follow Anglican Internet Church” tab in the right side column.  Our site host, WordPress.com, will notify you of the latest posts.

May God bless you in all that you do in His Name.  Glory be to God for all tings! Amen!

 

 

Episode Two in the AIC Seasonal Video series, Lent A.D. 2018, is now available on our YouTube channel.  The subjects of Episode Two are other commemorations of Lent (Lenten meals, prayers and music) and the Collects, Epistle and Gospel readings, and suggested seasonal music, for First Sunday in Lent through and including the Fourth Sunday in Lent.  I’ve found some additional illustrations, including a stained glass window of St. Paul in East Anglia, England (above, left), to which I applied perspective correction.   I used this one because, since all four epistle readings are from the writings of St. Paul, I was running out of images not previously used (either in Episode One or in other AIC Video series).  Also in the episode is a Russian Orthodox icon of St. Paul in flowing robes from the 18th C., from the iconostasis at the Church of the Transfiguration, Kizhi Monastery, Karelia, Russia.  The music suggestions come from the AIC Bookstore publication, The St. Chrysostom Hymnal, which include hymns either not in the 1940 Hymnal or which are in it but set to different tunes.

Watch the Video.    Listen to the Podcast Version of Episode Two

I am already working on Episode Three, which will be the final episode in the series.  It will be focused on Passiontide, including the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Passion Sunday), Sixth Sunday in Lent (Palm Sunday) and Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday).  The episode, due for release before Passion Sunday, will include many illustrations not commonly seen in the Western Church, including mosaics, frescoes and icons.   The multi-part AIC service for Good Friday, In the Cross of Christ I Glory, is already available in Podcast version and in written form in another AIC Bookstore publication, Occasional Services for Anglican Worship (pp. 75-101).  The eight podcasts are linked from the Podcast Homilies page.  The book is linked from the Virtual Bookstore tab at the bottom on the home page.

The next AIC Seasonal Video series is Easter: From Easter to Ascension, for which I have developed a special graphic featuring a 16th C. icon of the Resurrection.

As always, thank you for your interest in and support of this Internet ministry.  Just a reminder, 100% of all book royalties are donated to the AIC and no one associated with the AIC receives any form of compensation.  Please consider subscribing to the Blog by clicking “Follow Anglican Internet Church” in the right hand column.  You’ll receive notice of each new posting.

If you have not already done so, I urge readers to attend an Ash Wednesday service today and receive the Imposition of Ashes.

May God bless you in all that you do in His Name.  Glory be to God for all things!  Amen.

Episode Two in the revised 2018 A.D. edition of Epiphany: the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles is now available both on our YouTube channel and through the episode links on the Digital Library page.   The focus of Episode Two has been changed since last week’s blog post.  The topics are Epiphany Eve, Epiphany (Day) and the First Sunday after Epiphany, including  appropriate Scripture readings from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the Proper for the Feast, the timeline of how and when St. Matthew’s “wise men” acquired a number and names, and seasonal music for Epiphany in The St. Chrysostom Hymnal (now available in a single volume paperback edition).

Watch the Episode Two video.    Listen to the Podcast version.

Illustrations for Episode Two include the 8th C. fresco shown above, an 11th C. mosaic, icons from the 15th to 18th C., paintings from the 15th C., statuary in a 15th C. cathedral in Spain, and stained glass windows from the 19th C. in the United States and Germany.

Episode Three, which will be uploaded during the week of January 15th, is focused on all the remaining Sundays in Epiphany season (2nd through 6th Sunday after Epiphany), their Scripture readings and Collects, appropriate seasonal music, and the prayer book’s provisions for transfer of services In years with either 26 or 27 Sundays after Trinity.

In other news, there were more attacks on Christians and upon Christianity during the Christmas and New Year holidays.  Remember that the secular forces at work in the world can only win the War on Christianity if we let them!  Fight back by continuing to read, study and learn the traditional teachings of the Church Universal.  I’ll have more to say on the topic when the next two episodes in our War on Christianity series become available, hopefully before the end of January, with Episodes Six and Seven, studies of the Te Deum Laudamus as a First Line of Defense.

As always, thank you for your interest in the online ministry of The Anglican Internet Church.  May the Lord bless you in all that you do in His Name!  Amen!  Glory be to God of all things! Amen!

 

 

 

What a busy week!  Phone conversations and site visits with clients, in town and out of town, and meeting with a potential singer/chanter for The War on Christianity series Episode Six and Episode Seven.  Plus putting up the family Christmas tree after Church on Sunday – and then nearly all day Monday as well.  But it was truly worth it on all fronts!

The tree is exactly 8′ tall, with the angel touching the ceiling.  There are approximately 1,000 small lights plus 4 strings of the old-fashioned bubble lights (which are what makes the all white blobs in the picture at left.  Imagine the white glowing blobs as yellow at the top with a red or yellow base.

There are probably an equal number of decorations, ranging from egg carton ornaments my mother, my brother and I made in childhood, plus several more made in the same style made by Corkie, Christopher and Laurie and by me, all hand-painted in gold or silver.  The oldest ornament is a tea pot my mother left me which had belonged to her grandmother.  There are painted ornaments from the 1940s, plastic musical instruments, cloth ornaments made for Christopher and Laurie with the year indicated, many ShinyBrite brand ornaments my mother and father bought (and we still have many of the cartons) from W.T. Grant or J. J. Newberry (both chains long gone) in the 1950s.  The angel on top is Corkie’s work.  There are four Department 51 brand ceramic Santa Clauses which fit over light bulbs.  There’s also a plastic drum-shaped ornament with an alumimun-bladed fan in the middle which moves as the heat from the lights increases.

The tree (bought from Costco just after Thanksgiving) doesn’t go up until mid-December because we celebrate Christmas in the old-fashioned way, honoring the Twelve Days of Christmas, which ends on the eve of Epiphany.  We leave both the tree and the exterior decoration up or on until Jan. 6th.  I’m the lighting person.  Corkie and I hang ornaments together, usually a two-day process.  When the children were little they too played a part in hanging the ornaments – and eating cookies, which Cookie made by the dozens.  The grandmother clock in the right background is a new feature for 2017.  Corkie bought it for $1 at a Church yard sale this Spring.  We had a clock specialist come in, tune it up and getting it going.  I plays 4, 8, 12 or 16 notes on the appropriate quarter hour, plus the hours chimes (Westminster tune) after the 16 notes at the top of the hour.  Many other Christmas-related art has been hung since the picture was taken earlier this week.

The slides for Episode Six in The War on Christianity are complete.  My friend Wayne Pask, a retired Lutheran minister, has agreed to chant the Te Deum Laudamus, which is the subject of both Episode Six and Episode Seven.  Part One is sung and discussed, line by line, in Episode Six, with Parts Two and Three being the focus for Episode Seven.   The Te Deum Laudamus was chosen as the best example of what I call The First Line of Defense in the War on Christianity:  understanding the teachings of the Church.   Both episodes are illustrated with historic art and quotations from either Scripture or Liturgy.

I invite readers to watch or listen to the installments of The Great “O” Antiphons series, which are archived on the Digital Library page.

Visit the Digital Library page for the videos.  Or the Podcast Archive page for the Podcast versions.

As always, thank you for your interest in and support for the online ministry of The Anglican Internet Church.net.   Help us by sharing this site and the other resources on the site with friends and family.

May God bless you in all that you do in His Name!  Amen

Glory be to God for all things.  Amen!

Last week I completed and uploaded to the AIC’s You Tube and Podbean channels all the remaining episodes in The Lives of the Saints – Second Series.   All thirty-one episodes are now linked from the Digital Library (for the videos) and the Podcast Archive (for the podcasts) pages at www.anglicaninternetchurch.net.   I’ve made several changes to the appearance and organization of the site, hopefully making it easier to find the electronic and print resources visitors are looking for.

Getting the project to completion allows me to focus the rest of A.D. 2017 and most of A.D. 2018 on our The War on Christianity series of videos and podcast; on updating several episodes from the New Testament Bible Study videos of a few years ago; and developing a marketing plan for the AIC Bookstore Publications.

The War on Christianity series has been reorganized, with the addition of at least two and  possible three new episodes that will provide a better bridge between Episode One, which examined the nature of the threat using actual examples of violence from around the world in A.D. 2016 and 2017, and the teaching episodes intended to offer self-defense through knowledge of Church doctrine and through the actual application of traditional teachings.

The slides and script for Episode Two are almost complete.  In them, I put the on-going “War on Christianity” into the historical perspective of the spread of the Church Universal from the day of Pentecost up until now, emphasizing the meaning of the Nicene Creed’s statement that the Church is “one Catholic and Apostolic.”  I pay tribute to the original Apostles named in Scripture and to the second, third and fourth (and later) generations of Bishops, Priests, Deacons, scholars, and theologians who, many times forfeiting their lives in the process, organized and spread the Christian Faith from the Holy Land literally across the world.  As always, the slides are illustrated with icons, frescoes, mosaics, paintings and photographs intended to enrich the viewing experience.  The episode ends with a series of slides on the membership and region-by-region and, sometimes, country-by-country distribution of its membership.  I suspect the data will surprise many.

As always, I thank you for your interest in and support for the online ministry of The Anglican Internet Church.  May the Lord bless you in all that you do in His Name.

Glory be to God for all things!  Amen!

After thirteen months of research, including the often-frustrating search for suitable illustrations, I have come to the end of The Lives of the Saints – Second Series.  Earlier this week I uploaded the final three episodes to You Tube and this morning approved their release to the public and uploaded the podcast versions to our PodBean channel.  Purchase of images used here and in the AIC Bookstore publications is made possible by donations and from royalties generated by sale of our twelve books.

Episode Twenty-nine celebrates St. Leo the Great, the first Roman Catholic pope of the many who took the name Leo to be called “Great.”  He presided at Rome from 440 A.D., when he was elected by acclamation. until his death in 460 A.D.  A very strong supporter of the decisions of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople (First meeting), he regarded the doctrinal rulings of the Councils as having equality with Scripture, since they were based upon Scripture.  He did not attend, but did write a letter which was read at Chalcedon supporting the dual nature of Christ decision of that Ecumenical Council. His remains are enshrined in an altar inside St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome.

Episode Thirty celebrates St. Clement of Rome, claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as the second Pope.  Other accounts place two, and in some cases, three, men between St. Peter and St. Clement.  St. Clement enjoys the distinction of having had his Epistle to the Corinthians (late 1st C.) considered in the first five centuries of the Church Universal as canonical, that is, equivalent to Scripture.  I quote from the his epistle several times in hopes to helping bring his work to the attention of modern listeners and readers, most of whom have never heard of Clement of Rome (or Clement I).  He presided at Rome from about 88 A.D. to around 99 A.D., when he died a martyr’s death on the Black Sea near southern tip of present-day Crimea.  The episode includes a 6th C. image of St. Clement which I extracted from a much larger frieze at the Basilica of St. Apollinare at Ravenna, Italy, one of the finest surviving examples of Byzantine art and architecture in the Western Church.  St. Clement is the Patron Saint of mariners and is often depicted with an anchor.

Watch the Leo Video          Listen to the Leo Podcast

Watch the Clement Video       Listen to the Clement Podcast

Episode Thirty-one, the last episode in the Second Series, celebrates St. Catherine of Alexandria, formerly a favorite saint but in the last 300 or so years relegated to near fictional status.  Among the saints of the early 2nd millennium, largely as the result of the Crusades in the Holy Land and the Western discovery of her story, she was widely popular.  Her name endures today in various colleges, islands, and mountain ranges named in her honor.  A strong tradition in the Eastern Church is that her remains are interred at the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, built in the 6th C. under orders by, and sponsorship of, Emperor Justinian.   There are many schools named after her, including St. Catherine’s here in Richmond, Va.  She is the Patron Saint of Virgins and all young women.  She met her death by beheading around 305 A.D.   The illustration is a detail in tempera and gilt on velum of the death of St. Catherine which I extracted from a larger work from the Menologion of Basil II, a form of service book with a Synaxarion of over 400 martyrs prepared for the incumbent Archbishop of Constantinople in the late 10th C.  The original is in the Vatican Library.  The illustration and the larger work from which it was extracted are included in the video.

Watch the Catherine Video     Listen to the Catherine Podcast

Now that The Lives of the Saints series is over, I turn my attention to The War on Christianity series of videos and podcasts.  I have reformatted the series to include at least two transition episodes between the opening video and the more teaching-oriented episodes which will follow.  The new material offers a summary history of the Church from the Day of Pentecost to Now, with data on Church enrollment around the world (Episode Two) and a separate episode (Episode Three) on three parts of the world where the Christian Faith was once the predominant religion: the Holy Land; Asia Minor; North Africa.

As regular viewers of this Blog and the AIC Web Site will have noticed, I have introduced a number of changes at the Web Site.  These are intended to improve the ease of use of the site’s unique video, print and podcast resources.   The changes include

• New messages on the two pages at the original host site at WordPress, referring all visitors to the Home Page at our official Web Site, also hosted by WordPress.com.
• Resetting and rewording of type and text for the Video, Podcast, and Virtual Library sections at the bottom of the Home Page.
• Visual changes in the links pages on the Digital Library page (host to Christian Education and Seasonal Videos) and to the new Podcast Archive page (host to the podcast versions of all three video series).

As always, I thank viewers for their interest in the site and encourage them to click the “Follow Anglican Internet Church” link, which will give notice of all new postings on Fr. Ron’s Blog.

Glory be to God for all things!  Amen!

 

I’ve gotten ahead on the production schedule and have now uploaded Episode Twenty-eight in The Lives of the Saints – Second Series, which honors the English Martyrs who were burned at the stake.  They are also widely known as The Oxford Martyrs, owing to the plain fact that they were tried, convicted and executed at Oxford in 1555 A.D. (Latimer and Ridley, with Cranmer forced to watch) and 1556 A.D.(Cranmer’s death).

The illustration is a recent professional-quality photograph by Jeremy West of the Martyrs Memorial at the intersection of St. Giles, Magdalen and Beaumont near Balliol College.  The monument was designed by George Gilbert Scott and was completed in 1843 A.D.  The steady deterioration of the monument was brought to an end by a refurbishing in 2003 A.D.

The episode features a short introduction placing the events in the historical context of the history of the Church of England from the 1620s through the accession of Elizabeth, with one picture each of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.  After that is a brief biography of Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer.  The very popular work, commonly called John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs but officially titled Acts and Monuments, is the source for many of the illustrations of the trial and executions.  I’ve left the gruesome details out of this Blog entry, instead posting the attached colorized illustration by Joseph Martin Kronheim of Plate V, Latimer Before the Council, taken from an 1887 A.D. edition of Foxe’s famous work

Watch the video

Listen to the Podcast

The three remaining episodes are finished and ready to upload to YouTube prior to the Feasts of Leo the Great (Nov. 10), Clement of Rome (Nov. 23) and Catherine of Alexandria (Nov. 29).

As always, thank you for your interest in the Internet ministry of the Anglican Internet Church.  May the Lord bless you in all that you do in His Name. Amen.

Glory be to God for all things! Amen!