Saint Florence Li Tim-Oi
Yes, we can!
Today we are observing the feast of Saint Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first woman ordained a priest in the Anglican Communion. Florence was ordained on January 25, 1944, in southern China, in the midst of the war between China and Japan. After the war, despite the Anglican Communion’s fierce resistance to her ordination, forcing her to resign her license to officiate as a priest, she continued to serve her congregation until the Communist regime came to power in China and churches were closed.
This began a very dark period of her life. Maoist Red Guards forced her to cut up her vestments with scissors. She was humiliated and tortured in various ways, sent to a “re-education camp” and then sent to work on a farm. Her home was raided repeatedly, and her possessions were taken. This went on until 1983, when she was able to emigrate to Canada and resume her priestly ministry 40 years after her ordination, until her death on February 26, 1992, in Toronto.
During those 30 years of suffering, scorned by the Church and persecuted by the Communists, Florence at one point contemplated suicide. Then, she says, she was “touched by the Holy Spirit.” She knew then that God was with her and would support her always, through all of her adversity. Many years later, she was asked how she sustained her faith during this time, and she answered, “I just went up the mountain and nobody knew.”[1]
Unable to meet with other Christians, Florence would steal away quietly to the mountains and pray in secret. When everything else around her seemed to be falling apart, tormented by discrimination, persecution, and division, Florence found a still point of sanity, serenity and connection within that sustained her faith: her capacity to see and to act in the dark.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness--
on them light has shined.[2]
We all have our times of darkness. Darkness isn’t always bad or evil, like the darkness that Saint Florence encountered. Darkness can simply represent what is unknown, uncertain, or fragile in our lives. Darkness is simply part of life. The contrast of light and dark is what gives depth and complexity to our experience. Light can be blinding as well as illuminating. Darkness can be soothing and restful.
While I was in Ireland last summer, I woke after midnight on a clear night and decided to walk out to experience the stars. I was amazed at the majesty of the constellations in the sky and at how even in the darkness there is light, surprised at how much I could see once my eyes adjusted. The darkness required a shift in my perception. That is what faith is like: the ability to adjust our perception to see the light that is always available to illumine our path and to embrace the shadows that allow us to remain in the light without being blinded by it.
Saint Florence nurtured an inviolable space within her heart, in which the light of God continued to shine even in the darkness. We can find refuge in that inner space, and even new insight and energy, when we are confronted by the divisive factions and the seductive distractions that seek to obscure our connection to the Light.
Jesus, like us, lived at a time of great conflict and division, in a place of great darkness as well as light. He emerges on the stage of history at an inflection point in the evolution of human consciousness, the point at which our capacity to see in the dark is threatened by new imperial powers that diminish human dignity and disrupt our primordial unity with God and creation. Jesus anticipates this rupture and offers a new vision of our primordial unity and our evolutionary potential as human beings. Jesus expresses this new vision in his core teaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”[3]
The word “kingdom” in the Aramaic that Jesus spoke, is, like its equivalent words in Hebrew and Greek, a feminine-gendered noun. A more literal translation would be “queendom!” Apart from considerations of gender, the root of the word connotes a well-formed, determinate exercise of power. It expresses the creative word or vision that is effectively implemented. As the scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz puts it, the root of this word “expresses that which says, ‘I can!’ to life.”[4] Yes, we can!
The word translated as “repent” expresses a range of meanings including to return, come back, flow back or ebb. Its root connotes something that returns in a circular or spiral motion to its origin or original rhythm. It means to be reunited with something by affinity in a way that feels like homecoming. “Come near” or “at hand” can mean to touch, arrive, capture or bring close. It has a sense of immediacy and forcefulness.
Together, these words express a return to harmony with the divine light in such a way as to reveal its potency. When we are attuned to the rhythm of the universe, divine energy is released. We ripen and become fruitful in a way that feels natural – like coming home to the world – and that radiates out to bring others into harmony. This teaching is worlds away from terrifying threats to repent because God is coming to punish you! It is an invitation to homecoming, to attune our hearts to the divine rhythm and come back into alignment with the universe. We can do this now, in each moment, with each breath. We can do it, even in the dark. Yes, we can!
Jesus gathers a community around this core teaching to heal the divisions the afflict body, mind, and spirit. This teaching is the mission of the church, which is described in the Catechism as “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”[5] That definition works so long as we understand the scope of reconciliation to include the whole cosmos, and not just human beings, and so long as Christ is the name for the Light that shines in the darkness, the primordial light that was with God in the beginning.
This is our core mission as followers of Jesus: the invitation to return, in each moment, with each breath, to remembrance of our primordial and indissoluble unity with God and creation, and the power that radiates through us to support the flourishing of life. Yes, we can!
[1] http://womensordinationcampaign.org/blog-working-for-womens-equality-and-ordination-in-the-catholic-church/2020/1/25/rev-florence-li-tim-oi-first-woman-ordained-in-anglican-communion.
[2] Isaiah 9:2.
[3] Matthew 4:17.
[4] Neil Douglas-Klotz, Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The Hidden Teachings of Life & Death (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing, 2022).
[5] The Book of Common Prayer, p. 855.