Stephen, as I said earlier, this Mass is very pleasing to me.

The syntax God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit has a Sabellian tone. You do not mean it to, but it does. The thing that most gives it this tone is the colon.

The problem here is the nature of language itself. The thing wanted here is to indicate non-dualistic reality. But syntax of any kind is inherently and unavoidably dualistic. So, any syntactical expression of non-duality is, itself, going to contradict the very thing one is wanting to say. The problem is not with your formulation. It is with the non-congruence of language and reality. Thus the deep wisdom of the old saw, "Do what I mean, not what I say." Point being, one cannot ever say what one means. There is no syntax anywhere that can do it.

So, we are stuck with having to develop a syntax which does the least possible contradicting of what we mean. We try to formulate with the least damage to our intent, recognizing that we cannot avoid doing some damage, some treason.

This Mass is extraordinary in that you are not just trying to clarify the Anglican worship but the Catholic worship as well. Not just our piety but all piety that is remarkable as Christian. This is just a splendid aim, and so much needed. My feeling is that you have succeeded very wonderfully so far and you are not finished, and I am wanting to urge you most strongly to keep at it and keep polishing and keep examining any area you feel needs further clarification. Clarification in the deep sense of spiritual pelucidating (!) is what you intend here.

One of the problems with Trinitarian syntax is that, if one goes to correct an appearance of impropriety on one side, one risks making one on the other. To correct a Sabellian syntax, such as you have here, unintentionally caused by the colon, one risks tritheism. Alternatively, one can also run into a docetic formulation, which is the natural tendency of the Tradition anyhow.

Thinking about this, Stephen, it occurred to me that one could add a standard Trinitarian formulation between God and the colon. This occurred to me because you use the colon consistently through the piece and, therefore, I wanted to keep something you clearly find important. So, I thought of adding one of the traditional phrases, which were developed just for this purpose, to clarify what is and isn't meant by this awkward (barbaric is a not an unwarranted adjective) language our Tradition uses. For example: Three in One, One in Three, or, One in Three Persons, or, following Justin Martyr, One in concept (essence), Three in number. Something like this, between the word God and the colon.

I think that in our present context, your use of the colon is warranted since, with today's huge influx of ersatz Vedic philosophy, going under many names, and with this being taken for functional polytheism, our people are disposed to take Traditional Trinitarian formulation for tritheism, and so it is good to have this Sabellian syntax, the colon, to guard against that tritheistic sense that is in the society at large.

By suggesting an addition of a traditional clarifier right inside the Trinitarian declaration -- something which is new, so far as I am aware -- I guess I am seeking to guard against falling off either side, Sabellian or tritheistic. It's an interesting problem, caused by the nature of syntax itself.

Regrettably, our theologians at Nicæa and Chalcedon were not so aware of the difference between what they meant and what they said as later generations were and are. Well, life goes on. What they meant was correct.

I began exploring Vedic syntax many years ago because I intuited that it could contain less of self-contradiction of what one wanted to say in a situation like Trinitarianism than our forebears used in writings and creeds. This raised a host of other issues....

I do not suggest you use Vedic syntax here. I feel, as you do, that the thing can be done well enough and true enough in the Stoic and Neo-Platonic [attenuated Pythagorean] terms in which our Tradition handles it. I believe one can work the whole thing up in Vedic syntax, as you'll see soon that we have done -- and in Latin (!). I also believe that it should be worked up in the Hellenistic syntax, as you are doing. So my comments and suggestions aim to stay within the syntax you employ.

I like that an homily is not required except from a bishop. This is a nice touch. Especially today, when this element of the order of worship is so used to harangue and to pander.

Stephen, another thing I like is the near elimination of extempore prayer. In and of itself, extempore prayer is a very good thing. But today, it is used as just another harangue and pander to the congregation. In former years I was very guilty of this horror and still feel the sense of very poignant shame. It is a terrible thing, a frightful thing, a truly vile thing.

On the other hand, formal, written prayer can be mere pro forma diction to a distant entity -- and this is not prayer either. I am happy to see that you have tried very diligently to retranslate or rephrase the traditional formal prayers of the liturgy to give them some freshness, which mitigates the tendency to pompously mouth them to a foreign object. God is nearest and dearest, of course, and appreciates being addressed with intimacy, with no sense of distance or foreigness, just as we do.

The "Oh God, grant ...." prayer is most common in our Anglican tradition. It always sounds to me like a gaggle of panhandlers. But I remind myself that few see it this way. I think it is appropriate, however, to bear in mind that, like the Mass in general, the prayers of this form are for the neophytes among us, not for the adepts. Adepts take such language for both insubordinate and perfidious. For them it is. For neophytes it is neither. It is appropriate.

Interesting how the same thing can be appropriate for one and not for another. The public liturgy is different from the private and the eremitical.

My own prayers tend to nothing excepting names of God, Saints and Sages. I learned long ago not to ask for anything other than protection when I feel threatened and for everyone to be happy. But there is an element of insubordination and perfidy even in this minimal request. Really, prayer is just communion, meaning, repartee among friends. The way one does with a person one is utterly at ease with. There is no asking, just talking, exchange, mutual enjoyment. Asking would ruin the equipoise. But neophytes and even rather advanced aspirants don't have equipoise so they feel they have to ask for this and that. So the Public Mass contains this element of "Oh God, grant ...."

Stephen, I like that you have tried to freshen up the language, to make the procedure less of feeling addressed to a Remoteness. God does not appreciate pomposity, trumpeting of His Glory and Blessedness. He is Who He is whether humans recognize Him or not. No one can make God more or less than He is. Pomposity is a real bane of religion.

I'm so glad you included a nice Litany. I love the Litanies. I used to set Litanies to music. I was a Church Organist before a Theologian.

The public confession. Stephen, this is something I accept but do not approve. The confession I approve. Making it public I do not. Clergy use this to lord it over laity and other clergy. ".... your sins are pardoned" means, operationally, in the mind of the cleric, "I do this to you, and I don't need to have it done to me." Both thoughts are wrong. Everyone knows they are wrong, but public confession encourages them, just like public alms encourages display on the one hand and prying on the other.

I think confession should be in private, with a friend, a close associate. This way, there is sympathy, which there should be if a penitent is sincere. A stranger cannot know a person well enough to hear a confession and make an appropriate response, both as to absolution and to penance. I remember priests telling me to go read a certain passage and myself thinking, "Putz, what I did was far worse than you're giving it credit for being and laying penance for." He did not know the depth of my remorse and so both absolution and penance were neither appropriate nor effective. It was a farce.

Confession should be heard by an extremely close associate, one who knows one very well. Only this way can what happens be useful soteriologically.

But again, neophytes feel they need public confession, so the Church has deigned to give it to them -- and to use it as a cudgel on them. So, I accept it, but I do not approve it. I understand the reason for public confession, even though I cannot applaud it. I would wish, rather, for such intensity of remorse and such directness of accountability as to compel a penitent to forego public worship altogether and go straight to the person or situation about which they feel remorse and make full restitution.

In other words, I would rather one go to heal the wound itself rather than to seek forgiveness for having made a wound they needn't have made. If you heal the wound, you won't need forgiveness. So, heal the wound, don't make new ones, and don't need confession -- that would be my advice, although Augustine is right, we all have to die as penitents ....

But the principle I am enunciating is correct and should be applied.

As I tell do-gooders: instead of trying to ameliorate suffering, quit causing it. You want to send money to flood victims. But, if you didn't eat dead animals, your own flesh and blood, the government wouldn't spend your tax money on draining wetlands so a few farmers can grow animal feed in rich lowlands, flood plains, while also using your tax money to pay other farmers, a few miles away, not to grow anything. Do you eat at MacDonald's and other fast food traps? If so, you are destroying tropical rain forest, promoting genocide and/or slavery, murdering innocent animals and throwing pathogenating your bloodstream into the bargain. And you want to be regarded as a respectable citizen?

Look at your life and see what you are doing to cause suffering, not what you can do to ameliorate it. Stop doing those things that are causing suffering. That will be enough. Cease activities such as these: waste, fraud, carelessness, wantonness, lust, drunkenness, superciliousness, anger, fear, loathing, me-first-itis, etc. Glenn Gould remarked once that he would become interested in the peace movement as soon as it became illegal for a child to pull the wings off a butterfly.

I like the muted tone and the absolution of your public confession. It seems you are sensitive to the feelings I am expressing here. This is what makes me take this work as a genuine effort to Reform the Christian practice, to rebuild the Church. This is why I am happy with it.

Stephen, The Dismissals are nice. The ACLU would have a field day with the conceptuality here, but it is correct.

The principle you enunciate by including the Dismissal is very important. It is an aspect of the principle I was driving at in the discussion of public confession. It is that being at peace with the neighbor is more important than being at public worship. This is a difficult principle for many to grasp. But it is true.

Years ago, I had just finished leading Evensong and was gathering this and that for the Mass to follow, for which I was to assist. A lady of my acquaintance suddenly appeared. She was an enormous woman, bleached blond, vulgar, dressed in black skin-tight clothes with metal buttons everywhere, especially near the private parts. She was loud and brassy and I knew her well. Some years earlier I had been billeted on a thoroughbred farm where I worked with a guy of her general background. We were both employees. She was his girlfriend, but he had others whom he would drag in and debauch.

Later, they began living together, trying to have a semblance of ordinary-hood and to make a go of their lives. It worked for a number of months. I moved off the farm and into town and left the thoroughbred farm hand business -- I learned more in five years working the horses than I did in 8 years of college and graduate school, incidentally!!

One day, while I was organist/reader/assistant at the local Episcopal parish, I ran into this girl in the supermarket. Her name was Sharon and I liked her. She was big and loud and crude, but I liked her. She was honest and always said what she meant and meant what she said, and I like that quality more than any other.

She said she and Bob were fighting because she suspected he was cheating on her. She asked if he cheated on her when he and I were on the farm. I said that he did, frequently. She said, he wasn't really cheating on her because they weren't really going together then, just debauching once in a while, but what made it cheating, as far as she was concerned, was that he was now telling her that he never did such a thing while at the ranch.

I assured her that he did, and she thanked me for confirming what she knew was the truth.

So, a few days later, here she is in the Church, full regalia -- enough to make the good Christian ladies of the Episcopal Way shriek in horror -- they all concluded I must be debauching with her !!! -- and she says she has to talk. I explained that Mass was near, I was assisting and could it wait. She said, "No it can't wait." The congregates were already gathering and would have needed ear plugs to avoid hearing her language, which was ordinary for her, but not for them ... at least, not in public ....

So I dropped what I was doing, told the priest I had business, listened to his peevish whimpering -- "Who's going to laver my fingers?!?!?" -- and left with Sharon.

She said she confronted Bob with the fact that he was lying about having lain with other women, she told him that I had said he had, he had grown violently angry and was threatening to rearrange my face. What she wanted was for me to stay by my phone, let her go home, call me, put Bob on the line and then tell Bob that I had said he slept around. In other words, Sharon wanted me to stand up to what I had said, to Bob, knowing he was likely to get violent.

She said that if I would do this, this would give her a little trust that there is a God and that He does want people to live right.

Now, pay attention to her reasoning here. It is most significant. She was wanting a demonstration that righteousness is more powerful than unrighteousness. This is a very basic thing, a very basic question people have. The issue was of the utmost theological importance: who rules this world, God or wickedness, and, is faith justified or not?

What an opportunity for a sermon by deed.

The call came through, I told Bob I had told Sharon he debauched other women, I refused to take it back, Bob told me that he was coming right over to beat me so hard I'd never walk straight again -- he could have, I am no fighter and he was -- and then Sharon grabbed the phone and said, "Thank you. That's all I wanted. You stood by what you told me."

And the Mass was over and later the priest bawled me out for dereliction of duty and pandering to a foul woman of notorious presence and repute. Somehow, he had got his fingers washed.

I admit to being frightened. But I did not call for help. I felt that the righteousness of the deed, itself, was enough protection. It was.

Some years later, Bob was killed in an accident in a slaughter house where he worked in Kansas. Our guess was that someone had had enough and one of the electric guns they use to kill the cattle happened to touch him.

So, it is important to be at peace with the neighbor, and so the Dismissal you include is necessary. There are many aspects of this usage which could be discussed. Its antiquity is not the only thing commending it.

Stephen, the tone of your Eucharistic Prayers is Greek, specifically, Irenæus. His distinction between similitudo and imago is echoed in these prayers and statements. The emphasis on similitudo -- that is, on being like God in sharing His Divinity -- is also very Vedic.

Our usual word for this thought is immortality, by which we mean, living forever. The roots here are significant, as they always are. Im is the negativer. Mort is the Sanskrit mrytiorma, which has several vowel forms, all based on the cognate m-r-t, death.

Our word mortgage is from the same root. A mortgage is a certificate of death. We do not have any debts, incidentally. We live within our means, and since we do not have means to buy a house -- buy as in pay for it on the spot -- we rent. Principle of living within our means.

Anyhow, immortality means not living forever, but rather, not dying. There is a difference. And the difference is implied in Logos Theology. Logos is being unscathed by birth and death. It passes through both processes unscathed, untouched, undiminished. The similitudo Irenæus says man had before the Fall is this quality of being unaffected by fundamental processes of nature. After the Fall, man is affected by these processes. The Sacraments materially reinstall the similitudo (immortality) man has with God before the Fall. By their means man regains Paradise, which is specifically being unaffected by birth and death and all other processes of nature.

Now, the referent here is not the physical body -- which disintegrates according to its nature -- but the soul, which has to regain its lost similitude with God, its Divine Nature, namely, not dying.

Of course, there are other ways to discuss the fundamental impulses at the core of the religion, but this Hellenistic way -- in contrast to the Roman way which emphasizes law and obedience -- is the most primal of all and is very close to Vedic usage on the same topic.

This Eucharistic prayer set is motivated by this primal impulse, which is the desire to Go Home.

Instead of saying immortality means not dying, it would be better to use the Pauline phrase and say, not tasting (experiencing) death. Not experiencing the sting of death. Or, taking this experience, too, as ordinary and necessary and just a going to sleep, not as an extinguishing of life or self. Vedic philosophy has a much more complete way of explicating the realms of experience here than Christian usage does. I do not mean to denigrate the Christian usage, however. Just mean to point out that the Ur-Type is more complete than its derivative.

Stephen, probably you know by now that I do not approve of the dogma of surrogate atonement: Christ died for our sins. In its place I prefer language which says we should die to our sins, or more to the point, stop believing we are birthing and dying or anything else -- in other words, crucify the ego. The exemplary nature of the central Christian reality, Crucifixion, as Jesus undergoes it, is my emphasis. I even approve the old Pietistical and somewhat Methodist (they picked it up from Zinzendorf) remorse for having myself crucified Jesus by improper acts and omissions. This spirituality is the ground of Bach's Passion According to St. Matthew.

The notion of surrogate atonement -- slaughter of an innocent for the sins of a guilty party -- governs the present organization of the Christian canon -- two testaments, covenants, dispensations of surrogate slaughter -- so, if one is to remove it from Christian usage, as I have, one is also obliged to reorganize the Canon. And I don't know of anyone living besides myself who has had that temerity.

The text for this attitude is Jeremiah 7:22ff.

For related reasons, I do not approve mixing the figures of Priest and King in the persona of Jesus as the Christ. He is a King, not a Priest. There is a lot to that one, too. I am aware of the proof texts. Enough said.

Stephen, the Prayer of Thanks after Communion is very nice. Again, the emphasis is on the Greek/primal immortality. Your sense of the way in which the Elements work is material, after Irenæus.

The syntax of the Blessing is not Sabellian. Very nice.

Stephen, your page 8 ends the papers on the Eucharist and so the sentence on worthiness or unworthiness of the minister or communicant is cut off after the first part of what appears to be a compound sentence. I suspect the second part of the compound is going to mitigate the invita Minerva of the first part. If the worthiness or unworthiness of either the minister or the communicant does not affect or impede the grace upon the other, then there would never be a reform movement in the Church. You would not be doing this.

What is meant to be said by this old and understandable dogma is that Christ is able to operate fully, without restriction, regardless of any historical contingency. The issue at stake goes to the heart of the religion, as the Church has always sensed that it does. But the usual solution to this problem, as of so many others, is at the wrong level, of the wrong logical type.

We can look at this under two aspects.

First, so far as the moral estate is concerned, the traditional disclaimer, as you have it, is correct. Of course, the moral estate of the celebrant and communicant does not affect the Grace of Christ which is in the Eucharist and mediated as Real Presence (in, over, under around and through the Elements) to all regenerate.

But it is not the moral estate which is the concern of reformers. Their concern is the Estate of Grace. And here the story is quite different. What happens is, Church practice devolves to the point where clergy are serving at the altar who are not regenerate, much less clergy (ordained). The guys are total reprobates who have taken the altar by storm, by trickery and by treachery and are administering the devil under the appearance of the Church. These vile beings use this dogma that the moral condition of the parties to the Eucharist does not affect the Eucharist to cover their deliberate and very effective efforts to lead the communicants into confusion, perdition and finally apostasy.

This is serious business. It happens. This is happening today in many parishes of all denominations and especially Roman and ECUSA ones.

The problem being faced is not that of a less-than-desirable moral estate of clergy and laity. We always have that problem and there are ways to deal with it and its existence does not at all affect the efficacy of the Eucharist. This is old and true dogma.

But that's not what, from time to time, we are getting ... as today, for example. Periodically, we are getting something which is of a very different order of things, of a whole different logical type. Namely, unregenerates -- unbaptized, unbelieving, uncalled -- who have seized the altar and are using it to promote deviltry. This is the phenomenon reformers face, it is what drives their efforts to clean up the household. It is not at all the common, garden-variety phenomenon of moral imperfection which is contemplated by this hoary dogma.

Somewhere, you have to make this clear. Somewhere, you need to distinguish between this proper dogma regarding the moral estate and this other phenomenon, which the Church experiences in regular cycles, which involves something wholly different, wholly else, namely the Estate of Grace -- and actually, the absolute lack of same among the clergy.

Huss is the original reformer and his thoughts on this subject are clear and correct. He was no revolutionary. Like me, he was a deep conservative. He was saying that the revolutionaries had seized the Church and he was just trying to throw the bastards out. His description of himself and his relative position was accurate, as mine is. This is the truth about the ECUSA today: it is led not by Anglicans but by Parliamentarians.

I am an Anglican. I am the mainstream. The clergy who oppose me are Parliamentarians. They are mutineers because they are unregenerate or apostate. If they were merely immoral, I would pay no heed and no one would hear from me. But that's not what's happening. What's happening is much more than a little naughtiness. It is something altogether different, in the realm of the Estate of Grace, not the estate of morality.

This difference in logical type or order of things has to be expressed. When it is expressed, mutineers are exposed. It is clear that they are using the dogma that the estate of morals does not affect the mediation of Grace in order to hide the fact that they are mediating the devil, not God.

If these ECUSA clergy were clergy, if they were regenerate, no one would feel a need to reform the Church. The feeling that reform is needed is evidence that the Church is in the hands of reprobates and apostates -- mutineers. This has to be made clear. Christ is bigger and more than all the symbols and vessels in which He mediates Himself.

We all must tolerate conditions of moral imperfection. At all times. None of us, however, is required to tolerate mutiny hiding from recognition by claiming that it is only imperfection. This is the argument relative to homosexuality, also. Moral imperfection is one thing. Mutiny, which is evidence of reprobation, is quite another. We are not obliged to allow the reprobate to demand tolerance on the premise that they are merely not perfect. Between imperfection and mutiny there is a difference of kind, not of degree.

Second, the thing needing affirmation is the reality of Divine Omnipotence. The way to affirm this with respect to the Eucharist is not to say that the moral estate of the actors is inaffective -- we all know that it is very affective -- but to say that the Eucharist is bigger than the Mass. Instead of diminishing the importance of the moral realm, expand the importance of the spiritual. Instead of saying this doesn't matter, say, All Life is Holy.

You can't get away from God. Rightly understood, every common thing is Christ's Body and every particle of the Universe is He. When He said that the wine in the cup was His Blood, He meant that anything which has blood is He.

Our Christian tradition so often contracts and excludes when it should expand and include. We pay a dear price for defining the religion in Latin legal terms. What we want to say in this matter is better than what we end up actually saying. This is the story of Nicæa and Chalcedon, too.

Stephen, I really like your inclusion of the old Hymns. I learned Church Music from a buddy of David McKay Williams -- my natural father -- and from one who helped prepare The Hymnal 1940 with Canon Douglas -- J. William Jones, Director of the University of Redlands Choir. I was a founding member of the Chapel Singers of that Choir.

Stephen, the Sanctorals are lovely. Just lovely. The whole work is a marvel and I am just thrilled to have the privilege of seeing and using it.

I hope you will accept my warmest encouragement for what you are doing here. Take none of this as suggesting a change. Take it merely as observations. I am in deepest accord with your intentions and want this Mass to go out and heal the sick, give back self-confidence to the worried and confirm the strong.

Now, Stephen, who is your Economus? And, are you reciting this Mass regularly? And finally, are you developing a Breviary and/or a Diurnal? I should think that you are. I should think that you should.

Adwaitha Hermitage
August 18, 1993