Winter Conference 2016 Winter Conference 2016

+Philip Jones, Winter Conference 2017

The catechism explains that the sacraments are outward and visible signs (read: symbols) of inward and spiritual grace. This grace must be experienced, not just cogitated about or announced over us in the sacraments. And grace, such as the grace of knowing you are marked as Christ’s own for ever, is delivered through the Holy Spirit.

Ordinary Time refers to the days between the Feast of the Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, as well as the “ordinal" (numbered) weeks of Pentecost after Trinity Sunday.

This is love at its best, an immoderate pouring out of all that we are and all that we have for the sake of another. After all, the center of our faith is the example par excellence of immoderate love--the willing sacrificial death of the Son of God. As attempt to walk the middle way, might our love be immoderate in exactly this way.

God is on the move in our generation, and in His sovereign will has allowed The Mission to serve a significant role in helping the cynical, worn-out and despairing among us—providing a place for the lost to find profound meaning and life in the shadow of God's Word, the mystery of the Sacraments and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Advent is a season for such holy hunger. Advent, this time when we as the Church inhabit Christ's first coming as a way to look forward to his second, names that hunger and in some sense gives us a taste of what it might feel like to be truly satisfied.

The peace that Christ gives is richer, deeper and eternal. Ultimately, it is a peace that comes alongside the gift of the Holy Spirit, which means it is a peace that comes from being united into the immutable peace of God Himself. So even while we wait for the fullness that will come with His return, we have the deposit that guarantees it.

In The Anglican Mission, we see the historic creeds as our sure guide, both to modern faith and practice, but also to the historic faith of the catholic, apostolic church.