Christ Church

Click here to listen to audio file of Matins & Ante-Communion for Sunday after Ascension Day

“The end of all things is at hand”

Ascension is apocalyptic. That is a loaded term and, perhaps, a frightening term since it is fraught with the images of impending doom and destruction. Yet apocalypse really means an uncovering, a making known, or a revealing of what is hidden. In this sense, it is actually something powerful and positive rather than fearful and paralyzing.

Everything turns on the sense or meaning of an end. End in what sense? Ascensiontide celebrates the end of Christ’s saving work in his homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to redemption. His homecoming is about our end with God, an end in which we participate now through the life of the Church. “It is finished,” Christ says on the Cross in what is regarded as the penultimate word from the Cross. It is an ending which is really about completion and accomplishment in the restoration of all things to God – something which is envisioned in the lovely passage from Isaiah at Matins in the harmony and peace between everything in creation and God. That is also what is shown in the imagery of the Ascension captured in Peter’s rich statement that “the end of all things is at hand.” That leads not to fear and anxiety but to charity and hospitality, to service and ministry “as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” It is now and always now.

To put in in another way, Christian life is always about living in the end times since everything is gathered to God. We are given a way to face suffering and death, hard times and sorrow with a good heart and with courage and even with joy so “that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” There it is, grace and glory! As the Matins lesson from Luke indicates, Christ’s Ascension leads to the disciples returning to Jerusalem not in sorrow but in joy, waiting upon the promise of the Father in the sending of the Comforter. This is the truest form of empowerment.

The term, apocalypse, serves to awaken us to that reality even in the face of the ups and downs, the catastrophes and challenges of our world and day. What is apocalyptic is not just about the rise and fall of kingdoms and of social and economic structures but about the making known of the love of God in human lives.

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The collect for today, Sunday After Ascension Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD the King of Glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:7-11
The Gospel: St. John 15:26-16:4a

Artwork: Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Last Supper, 1547. Oil on wood, Stadkirche St. Marien, Wittenburg.

I ascend to my Father and your Father

Homecoming is a powerful theme which has a certain resonance for us in the face of the current forms of ‘The Age of Anxiety’, to use W. H. Auden’s phrase (and title) in which we find ourselves. We are coming in one way or another to the end of the School year, a year marked by all manner of ups and downs that have required considerable flexibility and agility and much patience and forbearance for everyone connected to King’s-Edgehill School. There is much for which to be quietly and prayerfully thankful, much that has to do with commitment and working together. The headmaster, administration, staff and faculty and especially the students are rightly to be commended. Let us press on in the same spirit right to the end, whatever that end looks like!

The idea of homecoming is an ancient theme that reverberates down throughout the ages. It informs, for instance, the logic of Homer’s Odyssey, the story of his return from Troy to Ithaca by way of the idea of learning through suffering that such a journey entails. One of the graphic and telling illustrations of that theme is the story of Menelaus wrestling with Proteus (ToK students will no doubt recall this, whether fondly or not, I forebear to say!). At issue is the idea of homecoming in terms of truth and self-knowledge, of knowing where you belong in the order of things, the so-called cosmos. One of the telling features of that endeavour is the idea of a struggle to get to the underlying reality of things rather than being simply stranded on the surface appearance of things. Proteus is described as “the ever-truthful old man of the sea” but to get to him and the truth which he holds is a struggle. It doesn’t come easily. You have to work for it. You literally have to hold on in and through the changing circumstances and appearances of things until the truth presents itself to the questing mind. In this case, after changing in and through a whirlwind of natural forms, Proteus is only and truly himself when he finally speaks. It is an intriguing concept which goes to the idea of logos, word as reason, which concerns both the world and ourselves in it.

What he has to say concerns what is missing in Menelaus’ homeward journey, namely a respect for the various principles that govern the world. So too with us. Without an understanding and an honouring of the various components that make up the phenomenal world, we ourselves remain incomplete and homeless, bereft of the place of our belonging, at lost in our world of uncertainties. Yet home is where we belong in some sense, the place of our abiding in truth and in the truth of ourselves. It is a powerful image not so much about our uncertainties but about our awareness of our uncertainties which paradoxically give us a sense of certainty. Our unknowing is not without our knowing (and vice versa).

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“I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”

Jesus’ famous words to Mary in the stories of the Resurrection already point us to the culmination of the Resurrection in the Ascension of Christ. Such is the mystery of God’s essential life opened out to us precisely through the words of the Rogation Gospel on Sunday past. “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father”  (Jn. 16. 28). God is made known to us and for us in the comings and goings of Christ, the Word and Son of the Father. There is the going forth of the Word in Creation and now there is the return of the Word in Redemption signaled most completely in the Ascension.

The Ascension is the homecoming of the Son to the Father. The idea of homecoming is a rich and arresting idea. Home has such a powerful resonance and meaning. It speaks at once to the places in which we live but even more to the sense of spiritual identity and purpose. Who we are is grounded in Christ, in his going forth and return to the Father in the bond of the Spirit, the ever-present third, which belongs to the dialogic structure of all thought and reality. The Ascension marks the end, in the sense of purpose, of all creation. Its end and thus our end is found in the return of the Son to the Father. We abide in those eternal motions of heavenly love. Exitus et reditus. A going forth and a return. Everything is gathered back to God and has its meaning and purpose in God.

The Ascension teaches us the deeper meaning of prayer: “God’s breath in man returning to his birth,” as Herbert puts it. Creation redeemed has its crowning expression in the Ascension of Christ. Yet this feast, almost invariably lost to view falling, as it does, on the fortieth day after Easter and, thus, on a Thursday, highlights the radical and deep meaning of prayer. Prayer belongs to our homecoming in Christ’s homecoming. “We ascend in the ascension of our hearts,” as Augustine wonderfully puts it. Prayer is the motion of the Ascension in us. “Lift up your hearts.”

Far from being a flight from the world, it celebrates the redemption of all creation as returned to God in whom it has its being and meaning, its beginning and end. The very structure of some of our church buildings, such as Christ Church, architecturally speaking, illustrates the very motion of the Ascension. We go from the font to the altar in a kind of ascension that leads us up through the nave to the chancel steps and under the Rood Screen (under the Cross) to the sanctuary and altar. Such a movement in space and structure is the form of our participation in Christ’s going to the Father. The very beams of the building proclaim Christ as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all things. We are embraced in those wooden beams symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice and life and its culmination in the return of the Son to the Father. Such is the Ascension.

Our liturgy, too, in its ritual acts symbolizes the going forth of God’s Word proclaimed in the Gospel and the gathering of our souls to God’s Word made visible in the Sacraments. In every sense, there is the lifting up our souls and our world to God in prayer and praise, in Word and Sacrament, in service and sacrifice.

In the conditions of the latest lockdown, we may not be able to gather together in person but my hope is that we are together in prayer, the prayer that gathers all things to the care of God and that places ourselves in that care for one another. We live in the endtimes of all things by abiding in God’s eternal life opened out to us through the comings and goings of Christ. That is our joy and our strength even in difficult and uncertain times.

“I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”

Fr. David Curry
Ascension 2021

The collect for today, The Ascension Day, being the fortieth day after Easter, sometimes called Holy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continuously dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-11
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:14-20

Artwork: Barnaba da Modena, The Ascension, 1372-74. Tempera on panel, Capitoline Museums, Rome.

The collect for today, the commemoration of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), Nurse, Social Reformer (source):

Life-giving God, who alone hast power over life and death, over health and sickness: Give power, wisdom, and gentleness to those who follow the example of thy servant Florence Nightingale, that they, bearing with them thy Presence, may not only heal but bless, and shine as lanterns of hope in the darkest hours of pain and fear; through Jesus Christ, the healer of body and soul, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 58:6-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:31-46

Artwork: Francis William Sargent, Florence Nightingale Memorial, 1913. Main Cloister, Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph taken by admin, 17 May 2010.

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence to an English couple touring Europe. Her parents loved the city so much that they gave its name to their daughter.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cyril (826-69) and Saint Methodius (c. 815-85), Apostles to the Slavs (source):

O Lord of all,
who gavest to thy servants Cyril and Methodius
the gift of tongues to proclaim the gospel to the Slavic people:
we pray that thy whole Church may be one as thou art one,
that all who confess thy name may honour one another,
and that from east and west all may acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and thee, the God and Father of all;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3:1-7
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:15-20

St. Cyril and St. Methodius were brothers born in Thessalonica who went to Constantinople after being ordained priests. (Cyril was baptised Constantine and did not become known as Cyril until late in his life.) Around AD 863, Emperor Michael II and Patriarch Photius sent the brothers as missionaries to Moravia, where they translated into Slavonic the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. With his brother’s help, Cyril created an alphabet that later developed into Cyrillic, thus laying the foundation for Slavic literature.

German missionary bishops in the area celebrated the liturgy in Latin and opposed the brothers’ use of the vernacular. In 867, Cyril and Methodius participated in a debate in Venice over the use of Slavonic liturgy and were soon received with great honour in Rome by Pope Hadrian II, who authorised the use of Slavic tongues in the liturgy.

In 868, Cyril became a monk and entered a monastery in Rome, but died soon afterward and was buried in the church at San Clemente. Shortly after Cyril’s death, Methodius was consecrated archbishop of Sermium and returned to Moravia where he ministered for another fifteen years. He continued the work of translation and evangelisation, while continuing to face opposition from German bishops. Before his death in 885, he and his followers completed translations of the Bible, liturgical services, and collections of canon law.

St. Cyril and St. Methodius are honoured for evangelising the Slavs, organising the Slavic church, and pioneering the celebration of liturgy in the vernacular. For these reasons, in 1980 Pope John Paul II named them, together with St. Benedict, patron saints of all Europe.

Artwork: Oleg Supereco, Cyril & Methodius, 21st century (source).

Click here to listen to audio file of Matins & Ante-Communion for Rogation Sunday

“And the Lord showed him all the land”

Rogation Sunday celebrates the redemption of creation and our place in the landscape of creation redeemed. The Resurrection is cosmic in scope. It concerns the whole world as ordered to God. This acts as a kind of corrective with respect to our modern attitudes and approaches to the natural world as something which is just there to be manipulated and used. Rogation is prayer. Prayer does not separate us from creation but belongs to the gathering of all creation to God.

Thus prayer is an activity of redeemed humanity and happens in the land where we have been placed. Our places in the land are to be the places of grace. How? By prayer. Rogationtide embraces the world in prayer. The world is comprehended in the relationship of the Father and the Son in the bond of the Holy Spirit, as seen most wonderfully in today’s Gospel and which culminates in the Ascension. What is overcome is sin, the world as turned away from God and as turned against God, the world as infected and stained by our sinfulness, by our forgetfulness of our place and of ourselves in the landscape of creation redeemed, and of our forgetfulness of one another. The consequences are our disrespect for the land and the sea, for the world in which we have been placed, and for one another. We make a mess of it. We forget the place of creation in the will of God; we forget the redemption of creation and our place in it.

Rogation Sunday recalls us to a kind of theology of the land. In the story of Creation, the earth, the dry land, is said to be good (Gen.1.9,10) and the whole of creation not only good but “very good”. Such is the creation which God the Creator sees. And we, who are made in the image of God, are also formed out of the dust, “from the ground” (Gen.2.7). We are placed in the garden of creation. The garden is the land of paradise.

In the story of the Fall, our disobedience not only alienates us from God but also from the land. The land of paradise becomes the land of sweat and toil. “Cursed is the ground because of you … In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to the dust you shall return” (Gen.3.17,18). “And the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken” (Gen.3.23). That means to work with the land in accord with the will of God in creation. In the story of Cain and Abel, the land becomes the land of blood. Cain slays Abel in the field: “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground,” God says (Gen.4.10) in a particularly powerful and poignant image. These stories are altogether fundamental to what unfolds in the story of salvation in the Old and New Testaments.

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The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday After Easter, commonly called Rogation Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:22-27
The Gospel: St. John 16:23-33

Artwork: Nikolai Ge, The Last Supper, 1863. Oil on canvas, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-89), Monk, Bishop, Theologian, Doctor of the Eastern Church (source):

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. John 8:25-32

Artwork: Antonio Cifrondi, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, c. 1705. Oil on canvas, Chiesa di Sant’Antonio Abate, Caprino Bergamasco, Italy.