The Pen of a Ready Writer

This is far from my first blog, or even writing experience. But, today the world changed; at least the world which is Christendom.

It is Resurrection Sunday, April 12th 2020. From the Last Supper until AD1054 the Church was a united body. The sign of this unity is - or, was - the Eucharist. There was one body, one bread, one cup and one Church. But the bonds linking the Latin church, based in the old Imperial capital of Rome, and the Greek churches, centred on the new imperial capital of Constantinople, were torn asunder. Emissaries from Rome entered Hagia Sophia and slapped down a deed of excommunication against the ancient Patriarchs, from Jerusalem and beyond. And the Church of Christ became two communions.

Over half a century later a radical German priest nailed to a church door a litany of complaints against the Church of Rome, and the whole of northern Europe was torn from southern Europe, creating not just three communions, but a geometric escalation of closed tables. Rightly, the late Cardinal Grey, Archbishop of Glasgow, said,

"This [the divided Eucharist] is the sixth wound in the body of Christ."

What changed today? For the first time since AD1054 all Christians are united again on the Eucharist. How so? Because, due to Corona virus (COVID-19 / SARS-2) we are all locked out of our churches, and there can be no valid Eucharist anywhere in the world.

As my younger son, Dr Malcolm, said,

"God has said to Mankind: go to your room right now, and don't come out until I say so. And, if you do come out, there will be hell to pay ..."

We are now globally reunited in being without the Eucharist. What was intended by Lord Christ to be the sign of our unity, and has become even more so with each passing century, the sign of our disunity, and distrust, and hatred, and misunderstanding, and worse.

I have heard some say that this isn't God - no, this is the devil; as if God and the devil were a ying and a yang of equal forces. But, even a cursory reading of the Scriptures tells us that nothing comes to us that He has not ordained.

"I form the light and I make darkness, 

I bring bliss and calamity; 

I the Eternal, the true God, I do it all." 

[Isaiah 45:7; tr. Moffatt]

Much is going on around us, for those with eyes that see and ears that hear; brains that would understand, and hearts that would learn. Since I have found myself in a new season of spiritual filling, I intend to share some reflections here, for whoever may come across them.

God bless you.

Bro' John, St Annan's Chapel.