September 2025
Spirit of the Eagle
St. John the Evangelist ACC
Spiritual Tidbits & Rector’s Reflections for
September 2025 from Father Tim
Summer 2025 is passing by and in September we come to another season change with Ember Days (17th, 19th, & 20th) and the first day of Fall (22nd). Along with the three Trinity Sundays (7th, 14th, & 28th) this month the feast of S. Matthew, Apostle & Martyr falls on Sunday the 21st. S. Michael & All Angels (29th) is a Day of Obligation in our 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Sunday the 14th is also the Commemoration of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The very idea of ‘sacrifice’ is repugnant to most people today, but mankind cannot get away from it, however much we may choose to dislike it as something superstitious and beneath the intellect of our techno-enlightened culture. We cannot escape the truth that all over the world, during all times, religion is connected with some type of sacrificial practice. Scholars continually devote a great deal of attention to this world-wide phenomenon, and they keep discovering that behind ‘sacrifice’ lays a deep-seated desire to achieve something, to attain something, to reach an end. No explanation of sacrifice is given in the Old Testament, as an institution, it is taken for granted. The only principle laid down is this: the blood is the life. The worshipper’s desire in offering sacrifice was to get rid of sin, wiping it away, in order that nothing may come between the worshipper and God. Thus the idea of sacrifice brings us back to the thought of the Eucharist, the ‘encounter’ between God and man, the great embrace, God’s child falling into his Father’s arms and there finding his true self. To the Christian, sacrifice is man’s return to God. There is no doubt Jesus Himself regarded His death as a sacrifice. He regarded His suffering, death, and resurrection as part of His Messianic vocation, a mission to accomplish, laid upon Him, and taxing Him to the utmost. Something which must be done if He is to fulfil the end for which He came into the world. What drove this costly effort? This willed and deliberate sacrifice? Love. Love to the uttermost. The loving desire to heal the broken relationship between God and man (broken by man’s sin) by the breaking of His Body and the offering of Himself in sacrifice. In offering Himself on the Cross He lifted sacrifice itself to a new plane, and transformed its meaning, because now it is God Himself who offers it. Christ, on the Holy Cross, has opened for us a new living path into the presence of God. That path is not for the weak. It takes men of strength and valor to help lift the Cross. Real women with endurance to follow it. ~ Father Tim
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Do you know someone who is finally considering their own brokenness? If yes, please invite them to church this September, where they can contemplate the Holy Cross, repent sincerely, and embrace the Source of Love in the Eucharist. ~ Father Tim
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We must not conceal from ourselves that true Christianity brings with it a daily cross in this life, while it offers us a crown of glory in the life to come. The flesh must be daily crucified. The devil must be daily resisted. The world must be daily overcome. There is a warfare to be waged, and a battle to be fought. All this is the inseparable accompaniment of true religion. Heaven is not to be won without it. Never was there a truer word than the old saying, “No cross, no crown!” If we never found this out by experience, our souls are in a poor condition. ~ J.C. Ryle, 1816-1900, Anglican Bishop of Liverpool
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Do you know?
Do you know Saint John’s may be eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places? Do you know our Book of Life Club will begin The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri in September? Do you know that Saint John’s made charitable donations to both Carenet Pregnancy Services of Northern KY and the Emergency Shelter of Northern KY in August? Do you know we are attending a Reds game in September as a church group?
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Saint John September Ordo Kalendar
Wednesday, the 3rd of September, at 6:30 PM, Evening Prayer
Saturday, the 6th of September, at 9:00 AM, Morning Prayer
Sat., the 6th of September, at 9:45 AM, Book of Life Club, The Inferno
Sunday, the 7th of September, at 10:30 AM, Trinity XII Mass
Wed., the 10th of September, at 6:30 PM, Evening Prayer
Saturday, the 13th of September, at 8:00 AM, Rule of Faith Meeting
Sunday, the 14th of September, at 10:30 AM, Trinity XIII Mass
Wed., the 17th of Sept., at 6:30 PM, Evening Prayer, Ember Wednesday
Sun., the 21st of Sept., at 10:30 AM, S. Matthew, AP. EV. Mass, Reds Game
Wed., the 24th of Sept., at 6:30 PM, Evening Prayer, Our Lady of Walsingham
Sun., the 28th of Sept., at 10:30 AM, Trinity XV Mass, Vestry Mtg
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The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed fleshly confidence; the new cross encourages it. The old cross was an emblem of shame; the new cross is jewelry. ~ Unknown Author
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September Birthdays & Anniversaries
Collin Dunn – Birthday – September 12
Robert Kleven – Birthday – September 12
Eliot Miller – September 15
Micheal Fraser – Birthday – September 26
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Why should we want to worship Jesus well?
I have observed that you are perfected in an immoveable faith, as if you were nailed to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, both in the flesh and in the spirit, and are established in love through the blood of Christ, being fully persuaded with respect to our Lord, that he was … truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, nailed [to the cross] for us in His flesh. Of this fruit we exist by his divinely-blessed passion, that he might set up a standard for all ages through his resurrection to all his holy and faithful, whether among Jews or Gentiles, in the one body of His Church. ~ S. Ignatius, died c. 108/140 A.D., Patriarch of Antioch
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Do not come unless you can say to your Lord and to us, “The Cross is the attraction.” ~ Amy Carmichael, 1867-1951, Anglican Christian Missionary in India
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True Religion
There are, of course, a lot of barriers that stand in the way of someone being receptive to us sharing our faith. A big one that I encounter sometimes is the notion that our faith is not the sort of thing that should be shared. “It’s good that works for you”, or “religion/faith is a personal thing” are the sorts of slogans one will hear.
I tell students I talk with on the college campus that I am not a Christian because it works for me; in fact, I would say my faith does not “work for me” hardly at all. My life is not really “better” by most standards for following Jesus, and this is exactly what Jesus tells us. “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Jesus tells us to “take up our cross” (Luke 9:23); in other words, his pitch to people is “Come suffer with me.” I have not gained money, sex, or power for my allegiance to Christ, and I wouldn’t exactly say I have always thrived existentially. There are moments, such as in Mass, when my life certainly is better for following Jesus, but I have had my share of moments where it has felt a whole lot more like bearing a cross. What has kept me focused on Jesus in those times is the reasons I have for being a Christian: chiefly, that it is actually true, and I can know it is true partially for reasons I have shared previously with you. In short, reason is the reason why I am still a Christian even through times of despair.
But is a religion the sort of thing that can be true? Well, in the eyes of many a postmodernist, it depends on what you mean by “true”. There is the idea abroad that there are truths which are objective (you know, real sources of knowledge such as science, mathematics, or history), and then subjective truths such as your faith. (There are also those who will claim “ALL truth is subjective”, but I will pass by that this time.) The problem here is twofold; first, there is some equivocation on what “truth” is, as well as a confusion about what the Christian is saying. Truth is what corresponds to reality; the philosophical position is (you guessed it) the correspondence theory of truth. Truth is a property of propositions, and propositions are true if they match reality. “Fr. Tim is the priest at St. John’s” is objectively true because the reality is that Fr. Tim is the priest at St. John’s. Objective truth is determined by what is “out there”, irrespective of me. By contrast, “subjective truth” is really just expressing my personal dispositions, and not making truth claims at all. It may be true that I like the Minnesota Vikings, but, despite my wishes to the contrary, it is not objectively correct to cheer for the Vikings. When I say “I am a Vikings fan”, the truth claim is about my internal state, and not a truth claim about anything “out there”. Note that even the claim about my internal state is still objectively true, because I am in fact a Vikings fan, often to my chagrin.
This is where there is some confusion about what Christianity is claiming. In confessing Christianity, the Christian is making some claims that go beyond their personal disposition. Because of what Christianity means, the claim “I am a Christian” implies some “propositional content” that we are believing, such as “there is one God who exists eternally as three persons” and “Jesus rose from the dead”, propositions which we are saying are true. Notice the shift from a claim about me to claims that have nothing to do with me. This is the shift from what is unhelpfully termed a “subjective truth” to a claim about the way the world is: an objective truth. The world (which I mean in the technical sense as a “maximal description of reality”; more on that, perhaps, in the future) is such that there is one God who eternally exists as three persons, and Jesus did in fact rise from the dead in the 1st century AD. Those concern the way the world is, and my beliefs are either true or not based on how they track the way the world is. This is no different, on the point of truth, from beliefs I may have about Roman history, or the elliptical orbits of planets. So, yes, a religion (such as Christianity) that makes truth claims about the world can be true if its claims are true and false if its claims are not. Part of what we are called to do as followers of Jesus is to share this truth. ~ Chris Stockman
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Whoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is antichrist. Whoever does not confess the testimony of the cross is of the devil. Whoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the firstborn of Satan. Therefore, let us forsake the vanity of many, and their false doctrines, and let us return to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning. ~ S. Polycarp, 69-155 A.D., Church Father & Bishop of Smyrna
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Simon of Cyrene and Jesus the Christ by Gustave Dore
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When I was an object of much contempt and derision in the University, I strolled forth one day, buffeted and afflicted, with my little Testament in my hand. I prayed earnestly to my God that He would comfort me with some cordial from His Word, and that, on opening the book, I might find some text which should sustain me… The first text which caught my eye was this: “They found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear His cross.” You know Simon is the same name as Simeon. What a word of instruction was here — what a blessed hint for my encouragement! To have the cross laid upon me, that I might bear it after Jesus — what a privilege! It was enough. Now I could leap and sing for joy as one whom Jesus was honoring with a participation in His sufferings. ~ Charles Simeon, 1759-1836, Anglican Cleric
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The seeking of Jesus Christ and the quest for chivalry combined lead directly to one place only: Anglican-Catholicism. Courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help and defend the weak and the poor. Welcome to the Anglican Catholic Church. ~ Father Timothy Butler