Anselm of Canterbury Archbishop, Confessor (1033-1109), Office Hymn – Hail, Thou Once Despised Jesus – LSB 531 T

Today we enter what’s called the Sanctoral Cycle. Today we begin to mark time between Sundays by hearing our Lord’s Word through the lives of His Saints. So, today we remember Anselm of Canterbury through the 2nd epistle of St. Paul to Timothy and the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. For today we embrace what the Sunday of Quasimodo Geniti has given us.

The Lord is risen. He has ascended. He is at the right hand of the Father. All things have been placed under His feet. So He reigns now through His Holy Apostles, that is, in His Apostolic Word and His Apostolic Church. This is what Quasimodo Geniti delivers. Jesus Christ is alive. So come and see. Hear His Word. Believe His Apostles, for His mouth speaks through them. Do not be disbelieving, but believe. Your sins are forgiven. Peace be with you.

So it is with that wisdom, and with that gift, that the Church now enters the Sanctoral Cycle with eyes wide open. Let us, therefore, attend to the Word. The Word Who has dwelt abundantly in the lives and lips of His saints. We do not worship them, we worship the Lord. But we do learn from them, from the gifts that God has given, from the crosses that He has enabled them to bear, from the good confession that He has planted in their mouths. We by no means despise His Law and commandments, rather we honor our fathers and mothers in the faith. So let us behold the Church, praise the Lord, learn from their example, and so remain steadfast in the Apostolic Word.

Today we commemorate Anselm of Canterbury as a confessor of Christ. We look precisely to how the Lord used His mouth and pen to keep the Church in the Word. For the Apostolic Word is clear. It is sufficient. The Lord has made known salvation in Christ and nothing is hidden. And yet where the Word is clear, we know and see that the hearts of men are always muddied and dark. Therefore, when the Church stumbles, it’s not because the Word is unclear, but because men are unclear. Yes, she stumbles not from hearing and attending to the Word, but from hiding it.

In his 11th century work, Why God Became Man, Anselm confesses nothing new about Christ and the Holy Scriptures. Rather, he simply confesses the Scriptures, and therefore, what and who the Scriptures reveal: that Christ has come not abolish the law or the prophets but to fulfill them, and indeed, to fulfill them for us.

We call this the substitutionary atonement. Our Lord takes our place. He drinks the cup of wrath on the Cross. The hell we deserve is paid for by Jesus. The righteousness we need is fulfilled by Christ and given to us. The Father’s wrath is satisfied, the demands of the Law are meant, the cries and right charges of guilt against us are silenced in the death of Jesus. You know these things. And this is what Anselm confesses. This is what the Scriptures confess. They are clear. Thanks be to God, so are you. For behold, says St. John the Baptist, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. (John 1:29)

The substitutionary atonement was never lost from the Holy Scriptures, though the heart of man loses it all the time. He makes little of his sins, he thinks it impossible for the Lord to be angry at sin, to have wrath against the sinner, he paints death as a friend, rather than an enemy and the final payment for sins committed. Indeed, the time is coming, writes St. Paul, when men will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears will gather for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. (2 Timothy 4:3)

The Scriptures have always been clear, but the heart of man has not. We are guilt as well. Thanks be to God though, the Lord has mercy on us. He plants His Word in faithful men again and again, opens their mouths, moves their pens and confesses His Christ to the Church sitting in darkness.

For this is the Lord’s way. This is His Apostolic Church. He is not ashamed of His Saints, and not ashamed of flesh. His Word has been breathed in to the faithful, and He wills to breathe it back out for the sake of the world. Let us join Anselm and attend to that Word. Let us repent of our passions, let us long for sound doctrine. Let us learn to rejoice not in how the Word makes us feel, but in the truth, in what Christ has done.

For our Lord promises in His dying breath that, It is finished. The Law has been fulfilled. The cup of wrath has been drunk down to the dregs. The demands of righteousness have been met. He is, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He suffers in our place. He bears our condemnation. And it is finished. That is truer and louder than all the world. That is truer and louder than the blood of Abel, than all your sins, than the muddiness and darkness of your hearts. It is finished. The cup of wrath is empty. Come, let us hear and confess the Law and the Prophets. For they have been filled up. The Lord has done it.

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