HMM. I ALWAYS FOUND THURSDAY ANNOYING, MYSELF...

By Fr. Wilson ( articles ) | Jan 31, 2004

Anglican news is always more interesting than ours. Part of this is that you never know what the Anglican Bishops will come up with next. The other part is that, by the time our Bishops have come up with whatever they're coming up with, you've lost interest and wandered away.

Anyway, the Anglicans are debating abolishing Sunday.

OUR bishops' conference would never do that, of course. That would be too straightforward, and everyone might understand it. They'd issue an eighty-five paged pastoral with footnotes, "SABBATH WAS MADE FOR PERSON, NOT PERSON FOR SABBATH" which, after an in-depth study of sacred time, would legislate that the former "Sunday obligation" be abrogated, replaced with "Gathering Time Sensibility." This Gathering Time Sensibility would be "realized" on the first Sunday of each month in Lectionary Cycle A; the second Sunday in Lectionary Cycle B; the third in Lectionary Cycle C. Gathering Time Sensibility would be realized on the fourth Sunday of each month in Advent, Easter and holiday weekends; and, ere long, Sunday observance would experience the same Renewal as Holydays have under the careful nurture of the Bishops. Appropriate study guides would explain that this regimen was rooted in the rhythm of prayer of the Early Christians, who have been left holding the bag for every self-indulgent excess of the last forty years.

Our Lord deliberately ascended to heaven before it occurred to the apostles to begin acting as a 'college,' and He was quite wise; the ending of the Gospel of St Luke would have a different impact if He'd gotten them out to the outskirts of Bethany only to have them tell Him that they had transferred His ascension to the following weekend because it was more convenient.