Christ Church

Light in darkness

The last lesson in the Advent/Christmas Service of Nine Lessons and Carols is the beginning of John’s Gospel (Jn. 1.1-14), known as the Prologue (though technically it ends at verse 18). This year, too, our Carol Services on Sunday, December 8th, came at the end of the last week of classes. With the Prologue, we end where we began back in September at the first Chapel Services.  “To make an end,” as T.S. Eliot observes, “is to make a beginning” for “the end is where we start from.” He means an end in the sense of a first principle as that upon which the being and the knowing of all things depends.

The lesson from John is the great Christmas Gospel that shapes a whole way of understanding about the nature of God’s engagement with our humanity. It speaks profoundly to the darkness of our world and day about the light which is greater than the darkness. “And the darkness comprehended it not” as the King James’ Version puts it, signalling precisely the intellectual aspect of light, as if to say that the darkness is not able to understand the light. The light understands the darkness but the darkness does not understand the light. The darkness in this sense is the absence of light, a negative.

The reading from John is also known as the last Gospel referring to a medieval practice whereby it is read, often silently, at the end of the Mass. Such practices underscore the significance of the Prologue of John’s Gospel for our understanding.

It opens us out to the idea of an intellectual principle as that upon which everything depends in spite of our uncertainties and fears, our anxieties and worries. John is speaking about Jesus Christ entirely in terms of Word, Light, and Son, yet Jesus is not even mentioned by name in John 1.1-14. Word and Light in relation to the idea of God are intellectual and spiritual commonplaces with respect to a number of religious and philosophical traditions. Augustine will note that he learned the “Word” which was “in the beginning,” which “was with God,” and which “was God” from the libri platonici, the books of the Platonists. Word that is light in the darkness of ignorance and evil is not a concept unique to the Christian religion.

How that Word lives in us belongs to the Christian insight of the Word made flesh, the principle of the Incarnation, one of the essential mysteries of the Christian faith. Yet that mystery speaks to the various ways in which cultures and peoples attempt to understand themselves in relation to a first principle, to the various ways in which that principle may be realized in human lives; in short, to the way in which it lives in us. There can’t be life or knowledge without the principle of life and light. “The life was the light of men,” John tells us. This testifies to an insistence on the primacy of ideas, to the significance of the Light which is greater than all and every form of darkness.

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In Dulci Jubilo

It was an appropriate ending to the last week of classes and perhaps a good approach to this week of exams. The Advent/ Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols were held on Sunday, December 8th at Christ Church, 4:00pm, for Grades 7-11, and at Hensley Memorial Chapel, 7:00pm, for the Grade 12 prospective graduating class of 2020. One of the few events at the School that are mandatory for students and faculty alike, the pageant of Word and Song is a significant feature of the School’s educational philosophy. It has very much to do with learning to attend, being attuned, as it were, to ideas conveyed through words spoken and sung together.

A veritable platoon of servers and singers and readers provided key leadership in the services. The central focus is the readings taken from the King James translation of the Scriptures. Six of the nine readings were taken from the Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament in the Christian understanding. They are powerful passages signalling light and hope and peace and joy in the face of darkness and despair, passages that point to the three readings from the Christian New Testament. The readers did an exceptional job of reading clearly and with understanding. The readers at 4:00pm were Will Larder, Alissa Pape, Vincent Armstrong, Mikaela Hinds and Will Mercer along with Head Girl, Ava Benedict and Head Boy, Evan Logan, who read at both services as did the Headmaster, Mr. Joe Seagram, and the Chaplain. Will Larder and Vincent are among the youngest students at the School; they read superbly as did all of the readers.

The servers at the 4pm service were Jacob Fines-Belcham, Alex Graham, Papa Ofori, Sarah Bell, Rendy Ashley, Owara Ofori and Lucas Martin, a wonderfully competent, confident and willing group. That service was greatly enhanced by a choir under the direction of Ms. Stephanie Fillman. They assisted in the singing of carols and hymns, at times by sweetly singing harmonies. The Advent Hymns and Christmas Carols sing the story of human hopes and human redemption in the tonalities of Advent expectation and Christmas rejoicing. In dulci jubilo, indeed, sweet joys, “the concord of sweet sounds.”

The 7pm service has an entirely different feel owing to the intimacy and the ambience of the Chapel. For our Grade 12s, it is their last carol service at the School, at least as students. The readers were Megumi Tsuji, Parker Kim, Aimee Cooper, Ohemaa Ofori, and Andrew Atwood, Head Chapel Prefect, along with Ava Benedict and Evan Logan, the Headmaster and the Chaplain. The servers were Makayli Paul, Ben Fleckenstein, Olivia Drava, Heavyn Beals, and Taewoo Kim. Mr. Owen Stephens was the organist at both services, providing different preludes and postludes for the two services.

I am grateful to all who helped and with those parents and family members who attended and showed their support and understanding of this kind of corporate activity so critical to a proper understanding of education. I especially want to thank the Chapel Prefects who have helped with the morning miracle of Chapel throughout the term. In dulci jubilo.

(Rev’d) David Curry,
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy

Written for our learning

Truth is judgement. A central feature of the Advent season is God’s coming in judicio, in judgement. God’s Word coming to us is truth as judgment. How does that Word come to us? By what is spoken and hear, by what is written and read . What does it mean for that Word to be learned? There is teaching but what about learning? The real meaning of learning is captured most profoundly in Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation: “be it unto me according to thy word.”

Her word is the resounding and defining mantra of the Christian Faith. God’s Word is “a lantern … and a light” unto our lives as the Psalmist puts it (Ps. 119. 105), but only through its resonance in us. That resonance requires that we be attuned to that Word, as Archbishop Rowan Williams suggests, for in that attunement lies our atonement, our being at one with what is spoken and heard, with what is written and read.

Mary is the outstanding figure of the spiritual landscape of Advent. It is instructive to consider her role in relation to the spiritual emphasis on the parade of Scripture on this day which is sometimes known as ‘Bible Sunday.’ “Whatsoever things were written aforetime” Paul tells us, indicating the purpose of the Scriptures. They “were written for our learning.” This is wonderfully encapsulated in today’s Collect in Cranmer’s rich phrases, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” It means paying attention to that word coming in judgement as the Gospel shows: “look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Mary is the supreme example of what it means to attend and be attuned to God’s Word, to what it means to learn the Scriptures; in short, to be defined by the Word of God in mente and in carne, in mind and in flesh for both are in judicio, in judgement, too.

All teaching seeks the embodiment of what is taught. It is about ideas living in us, taking flesh in our lives, as it were. Mary hears. Mary questions, Mary commits. Her great ‘yes’ to God is essential to the Incarnation of Christ. The Word takes flesh in her and from her to be the Word made flesh, the incarnate Christ. She embodies the highest expression of what it means to be human. We are called to be good Marians, to be like Mary in her active acquiescence to the power and truth of God; in short, to let God’s Word written and proclaimed resound in us.

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Monday, December 9th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, December 10th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Friday, December 13th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 15th, Third Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, December 17th, St. Ignatius of Antioch
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme

The collect for today, the Second Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 21:25-33

Artwork: Jacobello Alberegno, Polyptych of the Apocalypse, 1360-90. Tempera on panel, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Nicholas (d. c. 326), Bishop of Myra (source):

Almighty Father, lover of souls,
who didst choose thy servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church,
that he might give freely out of the treasures of thy grace:
make us mindful of the needs of others
and, as we have received, so teach us also to give;
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: 1 St. John 4:7-14
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:13-16

Artwork: Domenichino, Saint Nicholas, 1609-12. Fresco, Cappella dei Santi Fondatori (Chapel of the Holy Founders), Abbazia di Santa Maria, Grottaferrata, Italy.

Be it unto me according to thy word

The readings in Chapel in this last week of classes help to prepare us for the pageant of Word and Song in the Advent/Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols on Sunday and as well for next week’s exams. The lesson from John’s Gospel (Jn. 4. 46-53) in particular highlights an important feature of education. It is the idea of resonance, the sounding forth within us of the words coming towards us whether in Chapel, in the classroom, in the venues of sports or in our social interactions. In the teaching environment, you are taught various things, but what have you learned? What have you taken into yourself and made a part of you? Exams provide some indication.

“The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,/ Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils/…. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music,” Lorenzo says in a famous passage about the power of music in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. It is very much about what moves within us. In the play, the idea of musical harmony relates to the themes of justice and mercy, to what has resonance within us.

In John’s Gospel, an Official comes to Jesus in Capernaum seeking the healing of his son who is at the point of death. He beseeches Jesus to come down, to make a house call, as it were, to which Jesus replies in a kind of general criticism of human expectations which is really about our attempt to make God subject to us. “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,” he says. The Official repeats his request to which Jesus then says, “Go thy way; thy son liveth.” The wonder of the story is captured in John’s simple phrase. “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke unto him and he went his way.” Christ’s word has resonance within him. In going down to his house, his servants meet him to tell him that his son lives. He learns that he was healed in the self-same hour that Jesus said, “Thy son liveth.” Truth has its resonance in us.

The Word of God of itself cannot be constrained to the ordinary limits of time and space as we saw last week both in the pageant of the Ten Commandments, as the universal ethical code of our humanity and as known by natural reason, and in the marvel of the Centurion’s “speak the word only.” At issue is the resonance of God’s Word in us. It is about what we have learned, about instruction alive and living in us. Catechism means instruction by means of question and answer. The word points to the echo effect that is the resonance of the teaching in us, a sounding forth of what has been received and grasped.

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Clement of Alexandria (c. 155-c. 215), Priest, Apologist, Doctor (source):

O Lord, who didst call thy servant Clement of Alexandria from the errors of ancient philosophy that he might learn and teach the saving Gospel of Christ: Turn thy Church from the conceits of worldly wisdom and, by the Spirit of truth, guide it into all truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: Colossians 1:11-20
The Gospel: St. John 6:57-63

Times of transition signal occasions for renewal. We come to the ending of the Church Year and so to the beginning of yet another. The times of endings return us to our beginnings. Advent marks a new beginning. But what does it mean, these endings which bring us back to our beginnings? What does it mean to begin again? Is the cycle of the Church Year another dreary round of the same old things in the same old places with the same old faces? Or is it the dance of God’s grace and glory in human lives? “To make an end is to make a beginning,” T.S. Eliot observes for “the end is where we start from.” It is about the principle of our lives.

We come to the end of a year of grace and take stock of our lives in the light of God’s grace. It marks a kind of harvest-time for our souls, as it were, a gathering up of the fruits of the past year’s grace in our lives. But it means too, that we are returned to our beginning, to Him who is the foundation and meaning of our lives. The grace is God’s Word revealed and all because “Jesus turned.” The turnings of the year and our turnings turn upon God’s turning to us.

In the barren emptiness of nature’s year, “when yellow leaves or none or few do hang/ upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/ bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang” (Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73), Christ strides across the barren fields of humanity to gather us into the barn of his righteousness and truth. We are returned to him who is “the Lord our Righteousness,” our Judge and King, the Shepherd and the Healer of all mankind, the Alpha and the Omega of all creation. Our endings and our beginnings all meet in him. Basil the Great suggests what this means.

As all the fruits of the season come to us in their proper time,
flowers in spring, corn in summer and apples in autumn,
so the fruit for winter is talk.

Talk, you may protest, thank you very much, but we have had quite enough talk, too much talk, especially preachers’ talk. But talk about what, you might ask? What is the talk in the times of endings, the fruit for winter’s evening, the talk which marks the occasions for renewed beginnings? Surely, it is God’s talk, God’s Word and no other, God’s Word making his talk in us. For apart from God’s talk, our talk is vain and destructive. “The tongue,” as St. James notes, “is a fire. The tongue is an unrighteous member…With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the likeness of God.” Such are our contradictions. “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.” As he says, “My brethren, this ought not to be so.” But sadly it is, for “no human being can tame the tongue.”

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Love is the fulfilling of the law.

It is the great ethical insight of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic understanding albeit in different registers of expression. To put it another way, law is love. That is a challenging concept which requires some thought about both terms.

Advent awakens us to the deeper meaning of God’s engagement with our humanity through the coming of God’s Word to us. That idea belongs to revelation and to reason. There is the coming of God’s Word to Moses on Mount Sinai in the thunderous words of the Law encapsulated profoundly in the Ten Commandments. There is the coming of God’s Word in judgement in the powerful Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent with the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem on what Christians will later call Palm Sunday and which is here already associated with the ancient Jewish rites of the Passover. But even more, as Cranmer understood in the sixteenth century, that coming in judgement is seen most tellingly in the cleansing of the Temple, the passage which follows immediately in Matthew’s Gospel upon the entrance into the city. Here is the wrath of Jesus and yet that wrath is really love, God’s love of his own righteousness  and truth without which there is no truth or righteousness.

Thus are we awakened to the dies irae, the day of judgment which is ever-present because truth is ever-present. The judgement is the coming of God’s Word as light and truth into the darknesses of our world and our hearts. But this is actually love. Why and how? Because the coming of God to us is the goodness of God for us. And it is something known at once by revelation and by reason.

The Ten Commandments mark the climax of the ethical and educational journey of the exodus. The Book of Exodus is an ethical treatise that seeks to awaken us to a fundamental truth and principle upon which our thinking and living depend. The idea of God is not and cannot be simply a human construct – the assumption of every  garden variety atheist. The wonder of the exodus is that God makes himself known as “I Am Who I Am” to Moses in the Burning Bush. In the exodus journey in the wilderness God reveals his will for our humanity in the thunderous words of the Ten Commandments. Allah is all but it is the will of Allah, of God, that defines Jew, and Christian, and Muslim alike. But that will, which itself is nothing less than the explicit expression of the goodness of God, is something that is also known through the exercise of reason in its discovery of that upon which our knowing and reason depend, a principle which cannot by definition be defined by anything prior to it but only by everything which depends upon it.

This is wonderful but not new. For centuries upon centuries and in different ways, the Law in its summary form and as the Ten Commandments has been known as the universal moral code for our humanity, something known at once as given authoritatively but also as given for thought. In our liturgy we regularly and perhaps complacently say the Summary of the Law. We rarely hear the Ten Commandments even though in the history of our own Anglican tradition, at least until the dominance of the 19th century Gothic revival, our churches in their seventeenth and eighteenth century architectural form as auditory chapels often had on the walls of the sanctuary “The Belief,” the summary of the Christian principles of the Faith; to wit, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostle’s Creed. What do Christians essentially believe? There it is. We forget and neglect such things at our peril. We also misunderstand those principles when we reduce them to a set of propositions but that is another story about modern and post-modern narratives and their self-contradictions.

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