ACF

Anglican Catholic Future (ACF) is a network of parishes and individuals that seek to live and proclaim the Catholic faith in the Church of England.

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

If you enjoyed today’s tweets, from our speakers today, and would like to receive invitations to the next ACF event or livestream, please drop your email addresses here:

https://t.co/ikqiHhsOgq

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"Life is gathered, rich with joy & gladness, and as long as eternity. Let's lay to rest Hobbes' contract to belong. Let's refuse to be polarised, competitive in will to power, but belonging to each other. Then we will find the sacramental life is renewed in us."
Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"We belong, eternally, ultimately with God, and because of that, all life is sacramental. The sacramental life is not for us to renew; it's God's life. We can know ourselves to be the church that responds together to that eternal life."
Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"We are given power and agency to make a better world, not for self-aggrandisement. We can articulate that in a Hobbesian world, and then show forth the sacramental life that is sustained by the grace of God and in the life of God."
Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

We are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it. But this Body is not held together by fear; because its sinews are God-given, God arranges this body. All suffer with the suffering. It's a mystical body, not dependent on fear, but on the grace of God."
Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"We belong to the whole human race, a whole town, a whole church, which means we should always seek the common grounds of our common wealth. That's not to be motivated by the will to power, but by the duties of belonging to the whole."
Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"There's evidence that social media has made us more competitive, antagonistic... Our politicial system has become... susceptible to polarisation. But we can inspire through sacramental life a Catholic worldview, seeking a whole in which we each participate."
Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"Hobbes' Leviathan is held together by social contract, by fear of being cast into darkness; a deep and fundamental contrast with the company who know themselves as one body of Christ, each transcending our own identity, inspired to belong in a whole body."
Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"How can a renewed sacramental life help us to know we're not autonomous solitary beings, but heteronomous, belonging together, participating in a whole that transcends our individual being. We eat of the bread of life and drink of a common cup; not solitary."
Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"What might we learn abt sacramental life from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan? Life can be brutish & short. The trouble is Hobbes thought that's all life is; nasty, brutish & short. A sacramental imagination begins & ends with a different articulation of life as gift."

Dr Frankie Ward

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

And now our afternoon keynote address from The Rev'd Dr Frankie Ward, theologian and writer.

https://t.co/7dp7mFnyAa

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"The sacramental life of the church is the supernatural life of the church, the life it receives from God from God's promise and faithfulness. It affects what we think of ourselves and what we hope for."
Bp Rowan Williams

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"The meditative inhabiting of the liturgy and sacramental practice opens the eyes of people and keeps our eyes open to what the Body of Christ can do in a particular setting."
Bp Rowan Williams

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"Does [sacramental] worship look as if we expected God to be there? Does it look serious and joyful, or does it look as if it's something we've got to get through?"
Bp Rowan Williams

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"Renewing the sacramental life is about renewing the churchliness of the church, not the churchiness of the church. Becaue of God, our sense of humanity, and the environment, is transfigured."
Bp Rowan Williams

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"We're deeply challenged to recover the supernatural nature of the church; a church as community that looks to God, that isn't consumed with its own survival... What if a sacramental church is constantly seeking to open up a deep well of God's faithfulness?"
Bp Rowan Williams

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"How do we keep churches open? How do we make space for people to encounter God? How willing are we... to have an open space in a church? We're nervous about security etc. But can we get beyond those anxieties & affirm in a visible way that here is a space?"
Bp Rowan Williams

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"When we receive the Eucharist, is it putting a piece of jigsaw into place? With other members of the body of Christ, we are not at a filling station to keep us going; not remembering wistfully the late Jesus Christ, but where we belong. It is home-coming."
Bp Rowan Williams

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"The end of the world is something we cannot bring about by our own actions (although we are doing out very best to rectify that situation!) And yet, creation itself, whatever horrors we inflict on it, is anchored by God's faithfulness and held in God's hands."
Bp Rowan Williams

[ACF @AngCathFuture]

"At baptism, we take water and drop the Holy Spirit on to it in a splash with our prayer. What do we do with the bread & wine at the Eucharist? We put them into the fire of God's own prayer. In these sacramental acts, creation becomes what it is mean to be."
Bp Rowan Williams