Knightly News

A favorite hymn of mine, written by the scholar and Bishop of Lincoln Christopher Wordsworth, is Songs of Thankfulness and Praise. It is a wonderful hymn enumerating all that Jesus Christ accomplished in His three-year earthly ministry, from his birth to “making whole, palsied limbs and faithing souls.”

It climaxes with the prophesies of His second coming and the fulfillment of His kingdom that was inaugurated at that birth. It closes with the words, “May our lives and all we do, imitate and honor you, that we all like you may be, God in man made manifest.” That coda to each stanza, linking each stage of Christ’s purpose in coming to Earth, are the words, “God in man made manifest.”

“God in man made manifest,” expresses the core of what Christmas is: God coming to us, where we are and what we are, to bridge the immeasurable, immutable chasm between creator and creation. Being manifest, made apparent, not only in God’s entry into His own creation but also in becoming so relatable to us in a shared humanity. God made man makes us able to see and understand Him through His life discernable to us through the insights of the Holy Spirit.

The utterly ordinary, even abject state of His arrival only emphasizes Jesus’ willingness to come to everyone and anyone. No sin, no poverty, no marginalization, no shame can be beyond the lengths to which Christ is willing to go to meet us in order to carry us back to God. St Paul assures us in his letter to the Romans, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Our world today, more than ever, needs reconciling. We need reconciliation between God as a part of our common, human condition, but we also are desperate for reconciliation between each other. Divisions span our social fabric: families, friends, communities. Often, we feel these divisions seem impossible to mend. We find the distance between us, our differences and our conflicts too insurmountable to span, much less mend.

Then we see Christmas and the story of the Christ Child as a promise that, through Christ, all divisions, all disagreements, even betrayals can be met and erased and relationships repaired through the ministry and example of Christ. Yet, even in the world two millennium after His first coming, the world’s divisions persist. We see the promise as inaugurated but not realized.

It is then the message of the hymn reminds us that is our prayer to take up the ministry that Christ leaves us. “May our lives and all we do, imitate and honor you, that we all like you may be, God in man made manifest.”

I pray that each of us in our Episcopal Community, built on the deep and abiding mission to be imitators of Christ Jesus, to become ourselves agents of reconciliation and peace, bridging every distance of hurt, pain, and anger to meet the alienated, estranged, and marginalized where they are and bring us together.

St Paul reminds us in the letter to the Philippians chapter 2 that Christ, in coming to earth in human form, humbled himself to reconcile conflict and alienation. Being imitators of Him, humbling ourselves to come to others, we may bring our community and the world closer to that Kingdom the Prince of Peace came on earth to begin.

The message of the angels in Luke 2 is our hope in this season, “… on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Our mission is to further that hope, “May our lives and all we do, imitate and honor you, that we all like you may be, God in man made manifest.”

Father Patrick Edwards brings more than two decades of pastoral care experience to his role as Episcopal Head Chaplain. He previously served as an Episcopal faculty member in the school’s religion department from 2011 to 2016. He developed curricula and taught History of Religion in America, History of World Religions and Biblical Studies. He also provided pastoral care and counseling to students and faculty. While in this role, Father Edwards also served as the Priest in Charge at Saint Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge. Most recently, Father Edwards was the Rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church and Vicar at St. Andrew’s Dune Church in Southampton, New York. Father Edwards and his wife Deborah have four children – John Harris ’17, Will, Sefton and Emily.

The Episcopal School of Baton Rouge 2025-2026 application is now available! ​For more information on the application process, to schedule a tour, or learn more about the private school, contact us at [email protected] or 225-755-2685.