Daily Inspiration Quote by John Strachan

Grief, in Strachan's hands, becomes an exercise in disciplined hierarchy. He opens by touching the raw fact - a diocese newly "deprived" of its bishop - then immediately imposes a boundary: "we presume not to compare him" to a "blessed Apostle". The move is pastoral and political at once. It reassures mourners that their admiration will not tip into idolatry, while also elevating the dead through the very comparison he claims to refuse. Saying you won't compare someone to an apostle is a reliable way to make sure everyone does.

The language is collective and calibrated. "We presume" spreads responsibility across clergy and congregation, staging humility as a communal virtue. "Venerable" signals more than age; it encodes authority earned through office and continuity. In Anglican rhetoric, that matters: legitimacy flows through orderly succession, not charisma. Strachan is safeguarding the church's structure at the moment it could wobble - when a beloved leader's death invites emotional improvisation, factional jockeying, or spiritual freelancing.

Context sharpens the intent. Strachan, a major Anglican figure in early Canada, operated in a world where ecclesiastical authority was entangled with civic power and identity. A bishop's death wasn't only a private sorrow; it was a public recalibration. This sentence performs the recalibration. It contains grief, keeps praise within doctrinal rails, and quietly reminds the diocese that sanctity is real but ranked - apostles at the summit, bishops honored below, the institution enduring above any one life.