Commemoration: Æthelbert of Kent
O God, who called your servant Æthelbert of Kent to an earthly Throne that he might advance your heavenly kingdom, and gave him zeal for your Church and love for your people: Mercifully grant that we who commemorate him this day may be fruitful in good works, and attain to the glorious crown of your saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
C.S. Lewis scoffed at the idea of reducing Jesus to the level of a good moral teacher. Lewis rightly pointed out that the claims Jesus made about himself demand that we either worship him as Lord or dismiss him as a crazed lunatic or, worse yet, a demon. Today's Gospel reading is a fitting illustration of the foolishness of the "great moral teacher" argument. Seeing the faith of the paralytic and those who lowered him through the open roof, Jesus declared, "My son, your sins are forgiven." The scribes rightly believed that only God forgive sins. But they were not willing to believe that Jesus was anything more than an itinerant rabbi. Thus, they were taken aback by Jesus's declaration. Lewis observes in Mere Christianity:
We can all understand how a man forgives offenses against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He were the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history. . . .
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
O Merciful Creator, Hear
O merciful Creator, hear;
In tender pity bow Thine ear:
Accept the tearful prayer we raise
In this our fast of forty days.
Each heart is manifest to Thee;
Thou knowest our infirmity:
Repentant now we seek Thy face;
Impart to us Thy pardoning grace.
Our sins are manifold and sore,
But spare Thou them who sin deplore;
And for Thine own Name’s sake make whole
The fainting and the weary soul.
Grant us to mortify each sense
By means of outward abstinence,
That so from every stain of sin
The soul may keep her fast within.
Blest Three in One, and One in Three
Almighty God, we pray to Thee,
That Thou wouldst now vouchsafe to bless
Our fast with fruits of righteousness.
- Attributed to Gregory I
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