FATHER IAN HERRING - a tribute
BISHOP DAVID WRITES: On Sunday 13th June 1993 the death occurred of Father Ian Napier Herring. He was only 53. He had been Parish Priest of East Burwood, St. Arnaud, Ararat, Bundoora, and Essendon. Father Ian was a holy man whose life and ministry had an enormous impact on many people.
He was a seeker of truth. Believing that all truth is God’s truth, Father Ian delighted in theology, history, comparative religion, poetry, astro and quantum physics, literature and mysticism. He hungered after truth. Each new discovery renewed his sense of wonder and fun. He knew so much about so many things.
As a priest Father Ian radiated the peace and love of Christ. When he stood at the altar he knew that he was opening the gate of heaven for his people. He inspired them to believe in the Communion of Saints and the glory of God filling earth as well as heaven. He helped many experience God in their day to day lives.
A convinced Anglo-Catholic, Father Ian was never afraid to stand firm when he thought the truth was at stake. He was worried about the impact on our Church of reductionist liberal theology. He contended for the “faith once delivered to the saints” boldly but always with humility and gentleness. |
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Father Ian was a real inspiration to me in the early years of my own priestly ministry. I offer you the following pieces as a tribute to this holy priest and wonderful man.
HOLINESS - A WAY OF SEEING THINGS
A sermon preached by Father Ian in my parish, Christ Church Skipton, in July 1983, one of a series of celebrations throughout the Diocese of Ballarat to mark the 150th anniversary of the Catholic Revival (the “Oxford Movement”) in the Church of England.
Hebrews 12:14, a famous text, and the theme for one of John Henry Newman’s most famous sermons as an Anglican: “Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”
So, I want to speak to you tonight about HOLINESS. For holiness is what the great Tractarian fathers of the Oxford Movement were on about. Holiness, above everything else, was their passion. They were born into a world which cared little for holiness. Everything was respectability. But a Church trying to be respectable quickly loses its relevance. And the Church of the early 19th Century - not unlike the Church of the 20th Century Western Districts - was desperately respectable. And desperately impotent. You may have heard this famous contemporary quotation:
“The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save.”
The speaker was Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby school, England, in 1832. And it appeared that nothing could. Morale was at rock bottom. (”Barchester Chronicles” illustrates it well. There were six communicants in S. Paul’s Cathedral, London, on Easter Day, 1806. The clergy were ill educated and worldly. The Bishops were absentee gentlemen. The English parliament was making threatening noises to the bishops to get their house in order. It appeared as if Parliament would have to take over the Church as a department of state.
Churches were drab, dirty and untidy. You see, nobody cared.
When things were at their worst, one voice spoke up. One young priest - an Oxford don - sounded a clarion call before the University congregation: “What answer can we make henceforth to the partisans of the Bishop of Rome, when they taunt us with being a mere Parliament Church?” John Keble was his name, and he called the Church to acknowledge that it was God’s, that the State did not create it, and could not destroy it, that the Bishops owed their authority to their apostolic descent, not to their worldly prestige, that a nation which had abandoned holiness was a nation in apostasy.
Keble had lit a flame. Hearts were longing to hear his challenge. A group of young Oxford intellectuals responded by writing Tracts which stirred the Church and the nation.
There was Edward Bouverie Pusey, the Regius Professor who gave his name to the movement as a sign of ridicule. “Puseyites”, their opponents called them in derision. There was John Henry Newman, a religious genius in any age, later a Roman Catholic and a Cardinal. There was the brilliant young Richard Hurrel Froude. There was the master of Victorian sentiment, Father Frederick Faber. There was the prolific hymnographer John Mason Neale. We still sing their hymns. There were the heroic priests of the slums, persecuted and hounded by those who feared enthusiasm: A.H. Mackonochie, Charles Lowder, Arthur Stanton and Robert Dolling. There were Marriot, Mozley, Liddon, Wilberforce, King, Bloxom, Palmer, Seager, Benson, Dyce, Bodley and Denison. They were men on fire. And the one idea which united them was holiness.
Almost everything we take for granted now in our churches springs from those heroic men and their followers: the restoration of colour, life and joy in services; the use of vestments, robed choirs and sung services; candles, frontals, crucifixes, crosses, statues, stations and sanctus bells; the revival of the sacrament of confession; the revival of religious orders; the serious quest for holiness; the revival of the ancient ceremonial at the altar; and the first effective ministry in the slums.
Their names must never die.
Of course, we cannot merely try to recreate their age. That would be foolish. History does not flow backwards. And in other ways we are distanced from their point of view. They held a very literal view of the Scriptures which we could not espouse. It took another generation of Tractarians led by the brilliant Bishop Charles Gore, to reconcile their holiness with modern methods of literary criticism. We know more about Comparative Religion and about the Physical Universe than the Oxford Fathers did. But on one point we are united: the quest for holiness. We have not outgrown these giants of the past in holiness. We are, please God, their spiritual children in an apostolic succession - an idea which was so important to them.
What actually is holiness?
In a way, it’s easier to explain what holiness is not. Holiness is not something that an individual can acquire, like measles or wisdom. A holy person sees something about everything; it’s a vision of the whole world and of one’s self as only part of the whole. That is why it has eluded the “ego cult” of the modern world. When we want something we go and get it. We go on strike to get something for ourselves. We buy a book telling us how to “Teach Yourself” at home. These techniques only evaporate holiness.
Holiness is really a vision of God within the whole world, and all the world in God. It’s a vision of wholeness. It sees the links between us and the world, links of relationship and identity. Modern education starts from the opposite point of view. It contrasts subject and object. Man is set in opposition to the world. He fights the world to subjugate it. And man’s history, from this point of view, is a quest to push back the last frontiers. We use knowledge to enslave.
Holiness is the opposite. It uses knowledge to unite. The holy man has learned his place in the world, as a component part. He can no more subjugate the world than he can subjugate himself. He sees subjugation as schizophrenia. He learns to live simply and humbly, in order that the world ma live in harmony. He has reverence for the world. There is a real sense in which he sees the world as divine, as the revelation of God. Not in the sense of pantheism which destroys God’s transcendence; he sees transcendence everywhere. He sees the mark of God and his presence everywhere. In every creature. And especially in himself. He has discovered that his own spirit is holy. Jesus rebuked James and John for wanting to call down fire upon the Samaritans, because they didn’t know the nature of their own spirit. It was one. It was holy. It was of God. And it was also Samaritan!
So, the man of God doesn’t have to do anything to acquire holiness. He just has to see that holiness is already there. All around him.
Indeed, there is a sense in which the vision of holiness will lead him to re-define himself. The “atomising” process, which has been (until recently) typical of modern though processes, divides the world up into smaller and smaller particles. we even learn to divide between “our body” and “ourself”. We draw the boundaries ever closer. Of course, that’s one way of looking at things. And as you all know from the very famous example of the picture which is at one and the same time a vase, and two people kissing, it depends on the way you look at things. Our approach is crucial. It depends on where we put the boundaries. What is an outline, and what is an in-line? Do I act on my environment, or does it act on me? Or are we part of a wave-motion, acting spontaneously? Did Essendon play badly yesterday? Or did Richmond play well and force Essendon to play badly? Am I pushing, or are you pulling?
Alan Watts wrote in 1961:
“Beneath the separation of the individual and the world lies the field pattern. In this pattern, every push from within is at the same time a pull from without, every explosion and implosion, every outline and inline, arising mutually and simultaneously so that it is always impossible to say from which side of a boundary line any movement begins. The individual no more acts upon the world than the world upon the individual. The cause and the effect turn out to be integral parts of the same event.”
Does the animal die because it stops eating? Or does it stop eating because it dies? It depends on how we define the problem, doesn’t it?
Now, “defining” means “making finite”. We are well trained in the process of making the infinite finite. But what about the opposite? What about recognising the Infinite in the finite? We are trained out of that. Yet that is the business of the Holy Man.
Biblical Man saw things in this Holy Perspective. The Psalmist in Psalm 104 imagined life and death as God’s eternal breathing rhythm. he breathed out his divine breath or spirit, and we were created. We began to breathe his breath. It was life to us. Then he breathed in again. He revoked his breath from us, and we died. He inspired and we expired. The same motion was endless, accross the little boundaries of our lives. Seedtime and harvest, life and death, joy and sorrow, was the endless, seasonal respiration of the Infinite within us. Does your definition of yourself include God in it? How wide do you draw the boundary around yourself?
Indeed, let’s look at Jesus from this point of view. Though an ordinary man like us, he had a very extraordinary self-image. Note how, unlike us, he did not think of himself as a body in a capsule of skin. Whatever the boundary between himself and the world, it was not his skin. At the Last Supper, he took a piece of bread in his fingers and said, “This is my Body.” His Body did not stop at the end of his fingers. It included the Bread he was holding. He drew the boundary line around it. And around us. “Where two or three of you are gathered in my name,” he said, “there am I in the midst of them.” We are his Body, too. In fact, the capsule of skin, which is so important to us, hardly rated a mention with him. Notice how he even referred to the skin capsule in the third person, as if he were observing it. When he wanted to speak of it he called it “The Son of Man.” “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” “The Son of Man will be betrayed.” “The Son of Man came eating and drinking.” But when he spoke in the first person, when he was speaking of himself, he meant that beautiful Presence that is co-terminous with the cosmos: “I am the Light of the World.” “Before Abraham was, I am.” “I am the Bread of Life.” “I am among you as one who serves.” “I AM” to Jesus meant God, inside and outside him at the same time. No one who met him was outside him. He was the inside of everyman.
That defies worldly logic, doesn’t it? Lamely we Christians struggle to express his Magic. The Bread we share in the Mass we call the Body of Christ. Not because we can see him in it. Often we can’t. But we know that he is still seeing himself in it. And calling it his Body. What else can we do?
And the Church . . . us. This motley lot of men and women, who strive, and fall, and strive again . . . Who disappoint him again and again . . . we call his Body, because he calls us his Body. He defines himself and includes us in. What else can we do?
Such is the mystery that Father Bill read to us in the Second Lesson: “The Church is his Body, the fulness of him who fills all, in all.” His body is still alive . . . in you, in me. We are the resurrection of the Church. She rises again - and will, as long as there are men like Keble, and Pusey, and Newman, and Gore, and Ramsey, and John Paul, and Runcie, and Hazlewood and Walden . . . and you and me, who believe in him.
When you gaze at the Host tonight, just remember who it is you are gazing at. And who is gazing in you. Remember to keep the boundaries wide enough, and Christ-like enough. For the I Am That He Is is the I Am That You Are . . . and the I Am that I Am.
YOU CAN'T STOP THE CHRISTIANS
On All Saints’ Day 1980 at Holy Trinity Ararat, Father Ian produced a “Disco Mass” at which Bishop Hazlewood was the celebrant. He wrote the following words for the post-communion hymn. They were sung to the tune made popular by “The Village People”, “You Can’t Stop the Music”.
This is how it came, that Christians got their name
Christ was born of Mary, taught men how to care. He
Called his friends to be, as kind and good as he.
Christian love’s the kind of love I mean - that’s what I mean.
Heroes from the start, Thaddeus and Bart,
Philip, Jude and Andrew - what a heroes’ band. You’ve
Also heard of James, and other famous names:
Martha, Thomas, Mary Magdalene . . .
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
There were Peter and John, Oh their faces they shone,
Whipped till evening had gone, they were there next morning,
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
Stephen preached till stoned, Saw the Lord enthroned,
And converted a fellow called Saul.
Nero did his best, put them to the test,
Threw them to the lions, In oil they were fryin’
But they had him beat, Death to them was sweet,
For they knew they’d meet their Lord at last - the very last.
Polycarp was old, venerable and bold,
Governor said, “Please, Sir, you must worship Caesar.”
Polycarp said, “No! Threaten me with woe,
I’ve promised him I’ll hang in hard and fast.”
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
Martyrs went to the grave, So courageous and brave,
Seemed like wave after wave. You could only admire them.
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
Till one Emperor said, “Stop! Put an end to this lop-
ing of heads. I’ll become one myself.”
Theodosius, King most religious, Gave a hasty order -
Didn’t really oughta-, Seven thousand died. His Bishop then replied:
“Even kings confess when they are wrong!
(Kings can be wrong.)
Heretics by stealth, Grabbing Churches’ wealth,
Ambrose and Augustine kept heretics from bustin’
In to take control; These Bishops played their role -
Singing plainsong while the riots raged!
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
a barbarian chief marched on Rome like a thief -
City begged for relief: Bishop Gregory faced him!
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
To he deserts they flocked, to the trees and the rocks,
So Saint Benedict taught them to pray.
Verulamium, where Christians were called “Scum”,
Saw a refugee priest; Alban said, “Share my feast,
Then I’ll face your foes, Standing in your clothes . . .”
Now they call the place Saint Alban’s Town (His very town).
Island off the coast - Lindisfarne! - the most
Holy Isle in Britain. Never could there fit in
Saints like those who come to make the Island’s fame:
Aidan, Cuthbert, Chad are some I’ve found.
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
It was Oswald the the King (so the troubadours sing) -
Ranged his troops i n a ring round the Cross of Jesus.
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
Then Saint Thomas a’Becket stuck out his brave neck. It
Frustrated King Henry’s designs.
Keble lit a flame when all was sunk in shame,
“Secular” was gospel, God was nearly lost. Well -
The apostolic line, stretching back through time,
Was overlaid by every social (gimmick, every) craze.
Men of Oxford rose against the worldly foes.
Pusey, Froude and Newman, their pens were superhuman.
And - the people knew - their holiness was, too!
England won’t forget the Oxford days.
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
English missionaries came to Australia, to frame
A Church to be just the same: We are Anglo-Catholics!
You can’t stop the Christians, Nobody can stop the Christians,
Now my story is through, the torch is passed on to you.
Are you worthy to carry this name?
(Repeat last chorus)
VISITING MILAN
In 1992 Father Ian and Roberta went overseas. They visited holy places in Britain and Europe. Father Ian wrote these words about their time in Milan.
I have always loved the name Ambrose. St Ambrose is my patron saint. Roberta and I were married on his day, and we gave our son Nigel the second name of Ambrose. Why?
I had read of St Ambrose as a youth. He fired my imagination. A holy man, a fighter, a theologian, a Christian statesman, a poet and a musician. Ambrose had died in 397AD, aged 57. You can imagine my excitement when, about 10 years ago, I learnt that he was still buried in Milan. Could I see his grave?
Last September we only had half a day in Milan. St Ambrose was buried in a 9th century Romanesque basilica, where his cathedral had once stood. Roberta and I raced up to it breathlessly, just as a bell was ringing and the guide was ushering the tourist parties out. “Please”, I puffed, “we’ve come from Australia to see St Ambrose”. A smile broke over his features: “Saint Ambrogio?” And he beckoned to us, putting up five fingers to indicate five minutes. I ran towards the high altar. Our guide switched on the light, and left us for a moment.
There we were, on our knees, looking through the glass. There were three skeletons; two were dressed in red, and I knew they were the martyrs Gervase and Protase, whose relics had been discovered in Milan in 386 AD. Ambrose had asked to be buried between them. He was.
The centre skeleton was dressed in the white robes of a bishop. A small skeleton. I was shaking in sobs . . . Here was where Europe began Here in front of me was the first Christian bishop to stand up to the Roman emperors - a story which reflects as much credit upon emperor Theodosius as it does upon Bishop Ambrose. What a little man to take on Rome! Here the Manichean heretics sent their brilliant recruit Augustine to listen to the saintly Bishop of Milan and trip him up. But the reverse happened. The young man was captivated by the Bishop, and asked for baptism. From the interaction of these two minds came St Augustine’s monumental “City of God”, the blueprint for Christendom. It happened here! And look at those hands: I have translated the Latin words they wrote! One day I shall walk the streets of gold with this little man. I shall talk with him and learn from him.
We knelt for what might have been an eternity. There was nothing larger than life; it was rather that larger than life deeds were performed by this ordinary, mortal little man. If he could do them, why can’t I?
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