DMAS Synod, Year 2000  In June 2000 Archbishop Cahoon delivered this message at the Diocesan Synod for Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States.

We learned at this morning's celebration that today is the feast of St. Columba, abbot of Iona and evangelist of Scotland. I have a bit of a personal stake in St. Columba. The first records of my Scottish clan place my ancestors in the service of St. Kessog. Kessog was a disciple of Columba, and he planted a monastic foundation around Loch Lomond. The crozier I carry to symbolize my office of bishop is a genuine shepherd's crook from the Loch Lomond area — a further, if somewhat indirect, connection between St. Columba and our own church.

The Latin word "Columba," like the Hebrew word "Jonah," means "dove." That proved to be a rather ironic name for our saint. He was known to have instigated at least one bloody battle, and a biographer wrote of him, "Of all qualities, gentleness was precisely the one in which Columba failed the most."

If that fact did not qualify him to be a patron of the Continuing Church, his ethnic confusion probably would. Butler's Lives of the Saints begins his entry by saying, "The most famous of Scottish saints, Columba, was actually an Irishman."

Has this been a good year for the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States? I would have to say, "Yes, it has been." Shortly after the last Provincial Synod I wrote to Bishop and Mrs. Rutherfoord. I told them that I believed my election as Archbishop was in fact a way of honoring our diocese — of the ACC's acknowledging finally that the stable foundation Bishop Rutherfoord and others established here twenty years ago was in fact the proper model not only of how to run a diocese, but also of how to guarantee that a diocese survives. We should all be grateful.

It seems to me that in every parish I visit I confirm and receive more new members than I did the last time I was there. Parishes which were once content with part-time clergy are moving toward full-time ministries. Previously troubled parishes are settling down. Parishes which were satisfied with renting are now buying and building. Growing parishes are looking toward bigger buildings.

Our diocese-wide activities continue to flourish. We give thanks to God for the stewardship of Fr. Blair, and Fr. McClean, and Fr. Smith and others over our summer youth camp in past years. We also look forward to the new youth camp ministries of Fr. Jones and Fr. Gardner. The pre-Advent retreat, the Day of Witness, and the choir festival all continue to be great successes, and our annual synods are havens of blessing and of peace — at least they have been so far.

We have some fine men studying for the ministry of the church. They are the hope of our future together. I am grateful to St. Thomas of Canterbury in Roanoke for sponsoring the diaconal internship of Deacon Thomas McHenry. I shall be happy if no man is ever again ordained priest in this diocese who has not had an experience similar to the one which St. Thomas and Fr. Gardner have provided for Deacon Tom.

I am thankful that St. Francis in Blacksburg is providing a summer internship for our postulant Will Cohen. May there be many more such opportunities for our students. The whole province will before long be grateful to Fr. Barr and Fr. Blair who are taking the leadership in establishing Holyrood- Richmond.

Early in Lent I sent out an appeal for money for the Anglican Advance Fund. The fund helps pay to maintain the Provincial office in Alexandria, provides money for the travel expenses of our non-USA bishops, and defrays our legal costs.

The appeal, quite frankly, did not do very well. As I have traveled around the province in the past several weeks, I have come to the conclusion that there are other reasons for its not doing well besides the usual solicitation fatigue. There are people who seem to believe that our legal troubles are over or nearly over. Believe me, they are not.

Our parishes and our bishops and provincial officers have been dragged into court by people who are hostile to us and to what we stand for. We have yet to lose anything substantial in any trial court, but the provision in our system for seemingly endless appeals makes us vulnerable to being starved out by what is contained in the very deep pockets the other side seems to possess.

Others have suggested to me that being involved in these legal cases is somehow a frivolous indulgence in the sort of petty squabbling which seems to be pandemic in the Continuing Church. I reject that idea entirely. We are only defending what is rightfully ours.

When I visited the synod of the Diocese of the Resurrection last month, three of the parishes were in litigation — two of them were being sued by their former priests. Being involved in a lawsuit is incredibly disheartening and debilitating, as anyone who has been so involved knows. We need to stand with those people. It is also crucial that we have clear legal title to the names and symbols of our church and of its various works.

We need to make it possible for bishops who do not live in the U..S to travel to our annual meetings and for bishops from the US to travel abroad when they are needed there.

I make no apology whatever for asking for money for the Anglican Advance Fund—the province needs office help, we have to pay our legal bills, and travel money is essential. The province has no other means of paying these bills if we don't give. I plan to pass a hat—or maybe a miter--at this afternoon's session—so don't say nobody warned you! I wish each parish would also consider a gift to this fund when you go home.

At the extremely emotionally charged Requiem which preceded the burial of Bishop Joseph P. Deyman last week, Bishop Stanley Francis Lazarczyk reminded the worshippers why the witness of our church is so important. He pointed out that Bishop Deyman was, in ascending order of importance, an Anglican, a Catholic, and a Christian.

He said Bishop Deyman showed he was a Christian by leaving the established church in the late 1970's, when it departed explicitly from the historic, Biblical faith. He showed he was a Catholic in 1991, when he remained loyal to the ACC rather than become part of an ecclesiologically questionable, politically expedient amalgamation plan. He showed he was truly an Anglican in 1997 by refusing to make common cause with former members of our church who wanted to downgrade the righteous heritage we have received from the Church of England.

For all of our freely-admitted foibles and weirdnesses, and despite the twists and turns of our checkered history, the Anglican Catholic Church remains the legitimate heir to the jurisdiction of the Church of England that came to Jamestown in 1607. I hope you believe that. I hope you are willing to give money to support it.

Later this year our diocese will host another ACC Congress on Evangelism. I hope that many of you will attend—both because you have something to learn and because you have something to teach. Our primary task is to maintain what we have and with the help of the Holy Ghost to make it grow.

Tomorrow is Whitsun Eve. It was on that day 1437 years ago that St. Columba set out to evangelize Scotland and help establish the church from which part of our apostolic succession descends.

Again reading from Butler. "Missionary zeal and love of Christ are the only motives ascribed to (Columba) by his early biographers or by St. Adamnan, who is our chief authority for his subsequent history. In the year 563 Columba embarked with twelve companions—all of them his blood relations—in a wicker coracle covered with leather, and on the Eve of Pentecost landed in the island of Iona."

Let us resolve by grace to get into our own boats and paddle them along behind St. Columba, and see if we can convert some people too.

Jones-Baskwill Wedding, May 13, 2000

Archbishop Cahoon delivered this message at the wedding of Fr. Chad Jones and Megan Baskwill.

The Prayer Book's service for Holy Matrimony preaches the most effective sermon possible on the subject. God and Jesus and St. Paul all agree, for various reasons, that Christian marriage is a good thing. As a result, following the Prayer Book, each member of the couple makes promises to God and to each other which concern his moral will.

They are promises he cannot possibly keep on his own. So by blessing the marriage God says, "As long as you have the will to keep these promises, I will give you the grace and the help you need to do it."

Today's wedding points out a custom which the Church of England and her lineal descendents share which is unlike the custom of any other Catholic church on earth. That is the custom that her clergy may marry. In the Roman Communion priests are not to marry, but married men can in some cases serve as priests. In Eastern Orthodoxy a married man may be ordained priest, but no priest may get married.

Our church's rule is that, since Holy Scripture in no way forbids it, the clergy are permitted to apply to themselves the same standards which St. Paul lays out for all Christians in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. St. Paul says some people are called to be married, and some people are called not to be married. Each state of life is a gift which carries its own advantages and disadvantages.

God doesn't think that either of the states is superior to the other. He leaves it to you and the Holy Ghost to figure out which gift you have and then act accordingly.

Father Jones stood before me when I made him a deacon and ordained him a priest, and he promised that his home and his family would be wholesome examples and patterns to the flock of Christ. Today he and Megan are taking a momentous new step in that direction.

Article of Religion XXXII, titled "Of the Marriage of Priests," says that it is lawful for the clergy as it is "for all other Christian men, to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve better to godliness."

Let us pray that the marriage begun here today will indeed serve Megan and Father Chad better to their own personal godliness, and that it will always stand as a wholesome example and pattern to us.

DMAS Synod In June 1999 Bishop Cahoon delivered this message at the Diocesan Synod for Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States.

I am pleased to see all of you here, and I want to express my gratitude to Fr. Hawtin, Fr. Jones, Mr. Cote, Mr. Young and the other members of St. Stephen's for hosting this diocesan synod. St. Stephen's has had an extremely positive impact on our diocese, and I am particularly thankful to them for all of the support and help. and friendship they have extended to me.

That makes sense, in part, because St. Stephen's is, after all, my parish church. My family and I live closer to St. Stephen's than we do to any other Anglican Catholic parish except, of course St. Stephen's mission, St. Michael the Archangel in Frederick, of which we shall be hearing more later on.

As you learned earlier this morning, today is the feast of St. Barnabas. St. Barnabas is a remarkable New Testament character. St. Luke describes him as "a good man, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost." That is as favorable a review as anyone in the Bible gets.

The description of Barnabas sounds like what people who never read the Bible think everybody in the Bible is like - a paragon of such virtue as to be irrelevant to normal human experience. But Barnabas is, indeed, a flesh and blood human being - albeit a good one.

Without being excessively schematic about things, I want to use several of the themes St. Barnabas' life raises to talk about the past, the present, and the future of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States. I can assure you first of all of what later reports will also tell you - the fundamental state of the DMAS is very sound. St. Barnabas was a good man. This is a good diocese.

I can point happily to the vigor of our diocesan events - the choir festival, the Day of Witness, the pre-Advent retreat, the summer camp, and this synod itself - as good indications that we are more than just a collection of congregations united only on paper.

Much of what we know about St. Barnabas has to do with money. The bishop who ordained me told me that the greatest frustration in the ministry is the lack of measurable results. I disagree with him - at least to the extent that I don't think it is completely wrong to look at Treasurer's Reports for some sort of indication of how things are going. Our Treasurer's report for this past year - and the income he anticipates for next year - are gratifyingly positive.

We first meet St. Barnabas as a landowner who sells a field and gives all the proceeds to the apostles. He appears to be a rich man, yet none of the apostles reject him or his generosity because of it. Later on Barnabas is instrumental in raising money from the richer Gentile regions of the church to help the poorer churchmen in Jerusalem.

Barnabas' prudent dealing with money helps us to see why he is called "a good man." We have it on the authority of Christ himself that what a man does with his money goes a great distance toward revealing who he is - "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Everyone knows there is no magic formula for raising money in the church. There is a divine formula, however, and that is to awaken people to their Biblical obligation to tithe - to give at least ten percent of their income off the top for what the Prayer Book calls religious and charitable purposes.

We model tithing at all the levels of the church - our parish gives away at least ten percent of its income per year for charity and mercy beyond what we give the diocese, the diocese in turn gives ten percent of its income to the Province and another ten percent to charitable works, and more than ten percent of provincial income is given away.

If you are concerned about money in your church, tithing is the key to solving your problems. The parish priest should preach and teach tithing - and so, he must, of course, tithe himself. He must not say, "I don't tithe, so I can't tell them they have to." He must say, instead, "I tithe, and the fruits of tithing are something I want to share with my people."

St. Barnabas spent a good bit of time in Antioch building up the church there. That reminds us that the most important work of the church goes on at the local parish level. When I was making my visitation to the Diocese of the Pacific Southwest a couple of weeks ago, a man asked me, "What is working in the ACC?"

I said, "What works in the ACC is what works anywhere - a priest who loves his sheep and cares for them by feeding them with the Word of God and the Sacraments of the Church and by. entering into actual relationships with them."

As the priest is obligated to feed his flock, so is the flock obligated to feed him. Part-time ministry is not the model I want to see persist forever in this church. I have been very gratified by the general willingness of vestries in this diocese to strive to pay their clergy properly.

It is not right to think that you can get something for nothing or for relatively little - just because your priest has a pension from somewhere else and/or a hard-working and long-suffering wife who is already on a health-care plan. St. Paul reminds us, "The laborer is worthy of his hire," and "The presbyters who do good work as leaders should be considered worthy of receiving double pay, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching."

Try to pay your priest well and strive to have him work for your parish full-time. You will never regret it. The sage of Timonium is fond of telling me, "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."

St. Barnabas was a travelling missionary, and I have had to be a travelling missionary as Acting Metropolitan of the church as well. I am only able to do what I have been doing as Acting Metropolitan and as Episcopal Visitor to four domestic dioceses because I have the unswerving support of my parish - which is kind and generous to me beyond all description. The Executive Committee of the DMAS has also committed itself consistently to support my missionary work in any way they can as long as that work continues. I am grateful to them for their help.

I want also to express my gratitude to Fr. David Rupp of Ascension-Centreville, and to Fr. Dennis Sossi of St. Matthew's-Seat Pleasant. They are always ready to help me when I discover I cannot be two or three places at the same time, and I thank them for giving me that support.

Some more of the very most important things St. Barnabas did had to do with the reconciliation of seemingly hopelessly estranged people. It was Barnabas who convinced the apostles at Jerusalem that Saul - who was once bent upon killing them - had really become converted and was now their ally.

It was Barnabas who convinced St. Paul to return to the mainstream of the church from his self-imposed exile in Tarsus. It was St. Barnabas who helped St. Paul convince the other apostles that Jews and Gentiles had to be on equal footing if the church was to survive. Those are incredibly important achievements.

I am doing what I can to emulate St. Barnabas in making the ACC as open as we can possibly be to conversations with other churches with whom we might have something in common. The ACC's policy was for too long to say, "We'll talk to anybody," but then, in fact, to talk to nobody.

In April I spent a day meeting with Louis W. Falk, our one-time Archbishop. The meeting was at his request, and I went with the unanimous concurrence of the ACC's College of Bishops. Bishop Joseph P. Deyman of the Mid-West attended a conference of bishops from a number of jurisdictions in early May.

Through the good offices of the clergy of St Stephen's, I met recently with the Ecumenical Officer of Bishop Walter Grundorf's Anglican Province of America. I have conversed at length with Bishop John Broadhurst, Suffragan Bishop of London, and head of the Forward-in-Faith movement in the Church of England. On my recent trip to the Diocese of the Pacific Southwest I met with a prominent priest of the ACA (Bishop Falk's group), the Patriarch of the Charismatic Episcopal Church, and, perhaps most amazing, a priest of the Province of Christ the King.

I shall soon be meeting again with an Episcopal priest who is prominent in the Prayer Book Society, the Episcopal Synod, and the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen. The Fellowship will have its meeting here at St. Stephen's in August, and I expect to attend.

I cannot point to any immediate, tangible results of any of those conversations or beginning and continued relationships. I start off with the idea that division in the body is a scandal, and that the Holy Ghost can't possibly heal scandalous divisions if people refuse to talk to one another.

I have been greatly encouraged by my conversations with the Charismatic Episcopal Church. I believe we are not natural competitors, but that we are natural allies. I believe we have the same faith, and I rejoice that we have almost completely different histories!

Honesty compels me to admit that when we last read about St. Barnabas in the Book of Acts, he is having a tiff with St. Paul. The issue is whether John Mark - who went home before he completed their first missionary journey - will be allowed to accompany them on their second missionary journey. Paul says, "No," so Barnabas takes Mark and sails off to his native Cyprus and out of the story. But later on in his epistles, St. Paul does mention a man named Mark - positively.

I don't think it is too far-fetched to imagine that St. Barnabas - whose name means "Son of Consolation" - "the one who encourages" - persuaded Mark to go to Paul and apologize and reconcile. None of us can afford to forget that at the core of what we are about together is reconciliation - the reconciliation of man to God in Jesus Christ, and the reconciliation of estranged human beings to one another in Jesus Christ.

Second Corinthians must be our watch-word. St. Paul writes, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself . . . and he hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." St. Barnabas shows us the way.

Walsingham Pilgrimage, 1999

In May 1999, Bishop Cahoon delivered this address at the Annual Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham at St. James' Church, Cleveland, Ohio.

It is a great thrill for me to be back at St. James to spend this wonderful day with you. My only previous visit here for the pilgrimage was in 1972 - twenty-seven years ago -about two weeks before the break-in at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. I had been a priest for only about six weeks at that time, yet Fr. Irvin allowed me to administer the holy waters from the well-an unforgettable opportunity.

That was also just weeks before Fr. Irvin's thirty-ninth birthday, which he celebrated in part at my wife's and my humble apartment near Shaker Square. The birthday cake featured a biretta made out of black frosting, Fr. Irvin wore a paper party hat, and when St. James' then senior warden - the very Catholic Mr. George Landis - requested both cake and ice cream for dessert, my wife said, "Well, George, I see you're receiving in both kinds today for a change!"

I just finished going through the Gospel according to St. John with one of my weekly parish Bible classes. One thing that is particularly striking about that gospel is that the two most important individual revelations in it are both made to women. It is St. Mary Magdalene who first sees Jesus after he has risen from the dead and knows him in his resurrection as Lord and God. And it is the woman whom he meets at Jacob's well at Sychar to whom Jesus reveals the unvarnished fact that he is the Messiah of Israel.

I want to spend a moment this afternoon contrasting that woman - and one of her New Testament sisters - with the Blessed Virgin Mary as she is portrayed in the Annunciation story in St. Luke's gospel - the story that is at the heart of the mystery of the revelation at Walsingham. I will close by telling you a story about a more contemporary Jewish woman to whom the word of God came as well and who might be able to be of some help to you.

The woman at the well of Sychar is one of the most wonderful creations in Biblical literature. It is a great shame that her story is not in the Prayer Book Sunday mass lectionary, because we'd all know her better if it were.

But I hope you all do know about her anyway. Jesus and his friends are travelling through Samaria on their way from Jerusalem to Galilee. Jesus packs the disciples off to buy food and heads for the local well. I trust you will indulge me when I tell you that this story is amusing and St. John intends it to be amusing.

At any rate, if you are familiar with the Book of Genesis you will know that in Bible times the well was the best place to go to meet women. This was long before soda shops, shopping malls, or on-line chat rooms. When Abraham sent his servant to look for a wife for Isaac, he went to a well. When Jacob wanted to meet someone to marry he also went to a well.

In the ancient world, women fetched the water for their families, so if you wanted to meet a healthy woman, a well was a good place to look. The place in Nazareth the Orthodox venerate as the site of the Annunciation is at a well - that fact is not in the Bible, but the idea is perfect.

In any event Jesus meets the woman at the well and asks her for a drink of water. That was a major violation of Hebrew cleanliness taboos, and she knew it. Jesus was not acquainted with her in the first place, and in the second, she was a Samaritan - that put at least two strikes against her.

Jesus says, "Woman, if you knew who I am, you'd be asking me for water, and I'd be giving you living water." The highly practical woman replies, "You don't even have a bucket with you - how are you going to give me any water?" Jesus says, "After you drink the water you are collecting here, you're just going to get thirsty again. I can give you water that you can drink and never get thirsty again. Again she replies with perfect practicality and shrewdness, "Please give me some of that water and I won't have to schlep this pot down here and then back home any more."

Jesus has been setting a large bear trap for her in this initial bantering. He says, in all seeming innocency, "Go get your husband and then come on back. The woman says, "I don't have a husband." Jesus says, "You're absolutely right to say you don't have a husband - in fact you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband." She is obviously the New Testament antetype of Henry VIII. So the woman, now completely disarmed, replies, "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet."

What she does next is what I find especially delicious. She changes the subject. How many times have you been just about to get somewhere in a conversation on an important topic when the other person changes the subject on you? "I think you are drinking too much." 'How about that Tribe?" "I love you more than anything." 'What time does your plane leave?"

The woman at the well finds that her chat with Jesus is getting a bit too personal. So she tries to get the subject off of the threatening topic of her sins and into the rather safer realm of comparative religion. She asks him, "You Jews worship in Jerusalem. We Samaritans have always thought we should worship God up here -- I wonder who's right?"

Jesus says, "As a matter of fact, we Jews are right - but the time is coming when it won't matter where you worship God, because you will be able to worship God anywhere and everywhere." She replies, "I know that when the Messiah comes he will tell us everything. Jesus says, "I who speak to you am the Messiah."

So even though she changes the subject when the focus of judgment falls upon her, the woman at the well not only hears more clearly than anyone else that Jesus is the Messiah - but she also discovers the related point that to have her sins revealed is to have her sins forgiven. When she goes to bring others to Jesus she is able to say, "Come meet the man who knew all the bad things I ever did - but accepted me anyway."

Another hilarious subject - changer appears in the eleventh chapter of St. Luke's Gospel in the reading for the third Sunday in Lent - Devil Sunday. Jesus has done an exorcism and he has debated with the Jews over where his power to cast out demons actually comes from and then he tells a couple of parables about the devil's nature.

Everything is going along smoothly, when just then a woman yells from the crowd, "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast suckled", that is to say, "Your mother must be so proud to have a clever son like you." Obviously the woman had found the teachings about the devil a bit threatening and hoped that she could switch the focus to the rather more predictable realm of maternal piety - perhaps she had a hint of Episcopalianism or some other form of Wicca in her background.

Jesus replies -- and I believe he replies most sardonically, :"Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it," that is to say, "The really happy people are the ones who listen to God's word and then act on it.

He is certainly not attacking his mother - quite the contrary. No one can be said to have heard the word of God and then kept it more fully or more literally - than the Virgin herself. When we read St. Luke's first chapter we discover a woman with all the practical shrewdness of the woman at the well, but mercifully with no desire to evade an uncomfortable issue when it comes up.

The archangel Gabriel appears in Mary of Nazareth's room - perhaps flying in presumptuously through her window-and says, "Hail thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women." Instead of falling to her knees in a religious ecstasy or saying, "Yes, I am quite the person," St. Luke tells us that she was upset by the method of Gabriel's appearance, and by what Gabriel had told her, and so she turned over in her mind just what he could have been talking about.

Gabriel said, "You don't have to be afraid of me. God wants you to bear his son - he will be the heir of David and the everlasting king of Israel." The practical Mary does not avoid his statement or try to move to another topic. Instead, she applies her practical wit and asks Gabriel what was indeed the most obvious question, "How am I possibly going to have a baby? I've never slept with a man."

People sometimes scoff at the Virgin Birth and say that superstitious people could believe in virgin births in the old days, because they weren't that certain where babies came from. Those people need to realize that the two people who first questioned the Virgin Birth were Joseph and Mary themselves.

Gabriel answers her question - telling her that the power of God will come upon her and overshadow her just as he overshadowed the holy of holies in Solomon's temple - and so the boy child will be called the Son of God. But he doesn't rely on her to accept this out of sentimentality or unquestioning piety.

Instead he asks, "If you're wondering whether God can actually do this, just look at your cousin Elizabeth. Everybody thought she was so old and so barren that she'd never have a child - and she is six months pregnant. With God, nothing shall be impossible."

Recognizing an argument as direct and practical as her own, the Virgin says, "Alright -you've convinced me - I'll do it - behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word." We venerate her because she said yes. We adore her because she didn't change the subject.

Other than the Bible and the Prayer Book there is no book I recommend more often to my parishioners than The Way of a Pilgrim. The Way of a Pilgrim and its sequel The Pilgrim Continues His Way are anonymous accounts of a nineteenth-century Russian peasant who travels the countryside looking for an explanation of St. Paul's command in I Thessalonians, 'Pray without ceasing.'

The peasant finally finds a spiritual master who teaches him the Jesus Prayer, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner' the gospel in a single sentence. The master tells the pilgrim that if he practices saying the prayer regularly, he will discover that it will descend from his lips into his heart, and he will be assured that it is going on in his heart all the time - all he has to do is bring it to his mind or his lips at will, and he will know he is praying without ceasing.

I have been a novice practitioner of the Jesus Prayer for about thirty years now. When I tell people to read the book and give the prayer a try, I say, "This is a book that can change your life. It may not, but it can - if you will let it."

After I had known the Jesus Prayer for about a year, I read an essay by the novelist Ken Kesey - author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest among other novels. He pointed out that The Way of the Pilgrim is the book Franny Glass is reading in J.D. Salinger's novella Franny-and the Jesus Prayer and its effect upon Franny form the subject matter of Salinger's companion novella Zooey.

I had read Franny and Zooey with a great deal of enjoyment when they were published in 1961 - my Episcopalian mother was an inveterate reader of the "New Yorker," where the stories first appeared - but it took Ken Kesey to bring me back to Salinger with new appreciation that came from my own experience of The Way of the Pilgrim and the Jesus Prayer.

Franny Glass is this afternoon our final Jewish woman to whom the word of God about Jesus Christ comes - not from Jesus himself and not from an archangel's visit, but from one of the church's great works of ascetical practice - The Way of a Pilgrim.

People around her try desperately to get Franny to change the subject-telling her that the Jesus Prayer can do her real psychological damage and that she doesn't know Jesus well enough to be entitled to pray the prayer. But she keeps on with it and in the end achieves a measure of peace of mind - and this in the midst of a family so religiously eccentric that they would be worthy candidates for membership in the ACC.

If you are looking for some new excitement in your spiritual life I recommend that you read The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way - both far shorter than anything by Tom Clancy, Danielle Steele, or John Grisham. Read them, try practicing the prayer, and then, to encourage yourself further, take a look at Franny and Zooey for a thoroughly satisfying account of how prayer can change things - and change them in a way Hallmark Cards would never imagine.

Franny and Zooey arise in the same context we know from reading both the Old and the New Testaments. These people are smart, articulate Jews - with a bit of Irish Catholicism tossed into the mix. Franny displays the same shrewd incarnational piety we see in the woman at the well and in the Blessed Virgin herself. So when you think about these women, never forget the closing words of the Book of Proverbs - words written by King Solomon, a man who should have known what he was talking about, because he had 700 wives and 700 concubines himself. "Charm is deceptive, and beauty disappears, but a woman who honors the Lord should be praised. Give her credit for all she does. She deserves the respect of everyone."