Christ Church

The collect for today, the Feast Day of Saint Joseph, Guardian of Our Lord, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Patron of Canada (source):

God our Father,
who from the house of thy servant David
didst raise up Joseph the carpenter
to be the guardian of thine incarnate Son
and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
give us grace to follow him
in faithful obedience to thy commands;
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: Romans 4:13-18
The Gospel: St Luke 2:41-52

Artwork: Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, Saint Joseph and the Child Jesus, c. 1622. Private collection, Venice.

c/p: Nova Scotia Scott

The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2008 have been uploaded as pdf documents and can be accessed via this page.

Prayer Is Our Life
Fr. David Curry

Rumours of Lent swirl about in the snow-mist of the Valley and dance in the beams of the mid-winter’s sun. What I am about to say concerns the season of Lent but in its larger dimension. It concerns the Lent that is our lives, our lives in pilgrimage. I want to say something about prayer and a rule of life.

We all have, I suspect, too narrow a view of prayer and, as a consequence, too narrow a view of Christian life. The consequences of such narrowness are deadly. Where religion is reduced to simply an optional aspect of life, it ceases to be religion. Where prayer appears as simply an item in the smorgasbord of optional religious activity, it ceases to be prayer. To the contrary, religion is life essential and prayer is its necessity. The recovery of a sense of the necessity of prayer means the rediscovery of our essential selves in the very life of God himself.

We are to be a people of prayer. That is to be taken, I think, in the most radical sense as meaning a people who are defined by prayer, a people whose lives simply are prayer. How can this be? Read the rest of this entry »

The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon for the Feast of St. Patrick.

“The people which sat in darkness have seen a great light”

The Gospel (Matthew 4. 13-24, BCP., 315, Propers of a Missionary) says nothing about shillelaghs, shamrocks or even about snakes, let alone green beer! It does say something about places “upon the sea-coast”, about the preaching of Christ seen as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of light coming to “the people which sat in darkness” and in the “shadow of death”, about repentance, about discipleship, and about healing and salvation; in short, about all the things that belong to the evangelium – the good news that is the meaning of the word, gospel.

And the lesson, too, (Acts 12.24-13.5) underscores the same theme. “The word of God grew and multiplied,” meaning what, exactly? Read the rest of this entry »

The collect for today, the Feast Day of St Patrick (c. 390-c. 461), Bishop, Missionary, Patron of Ireland (source):

Almighty God,
who in thy providence chose thy servant Patrick
to be the apostle of the people of Ireland:
keep alive in us the fire of faith which he kindled,
and in this our earthly pilgrimage
strengthen us to gain the light of everlasting life;
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 Thessalonians 2:2b-12
The Gospel: St Matthew 28:16-20

Click here to read the prayer known as St Patrick’s Breastplate.

Artwork: Lombard School, St Patrick Baptising Christian Converts, 15th century. Fresco, Santuario di San Patrizio, Colzate.

c/p: Nova Scotia Scott

The 4th Annual Lobster Supper/Fund Raiser will take place at the Parish Hall on Saturday, 9 May 2009.  Click here to download a poster with more information.

The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, based on the Gospel reading, St Luke 11:14-28.

“Seven other spirits, worse than the first … enter in”

All sermons should come with an advisory, a warning that this may be dangerous to your health, either because it is too underwhelming or too demanding, too controversial or too boring. Or too long or just plain impossible. Today’s sermon is all of the above. You may want to ponder the Athanasian Creed or the Thirty-Nine Articles; if you can find them in the Prayer Book before the end of the sermon, extra bonus points and kudos to you! An advisory, I suppose, is most appropriate for today. It is the 15th of March, after all. Beware the Ides of March!

This gospel is the necessary counter to our greatest fault, spiritual pride. The capital sin of the seven capital or chief sins, we might say, pride is the head of all the deadly sins. It is actually the principle that is at work in all of “the seven deadly sins,” to use the categories which belong to the Christian moral tradition. Why? Because pride is the explicit denial of the grace of God without which we are indeed dead in ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday, March 16th
4:45-5:15 pm Confirmation Class, Parish Hall

Tuesday, March 17th, St. Patrick
6:00 pm Prayers & Praises, Haliburton Place
7:00 pm Holy Communion, followed by Lenten Study II: “The Seven Deadly Sins: What and Why?”

Thursday, March 19th, St. Joseph
10:00 am Holy Communion
1:30-3:00 pm Seniors’ Drop-In

Sunday, March 22nd, Lent IV (Mothering Sunday)
8:00 am Holy Communion
10:30 am Holy Communion
2:00 pm AMD Service of the Deaf
4:30 pm Evening Prayer at Christ Church

All worship services are according to the Book of Common Prayer.

An Introduction to “The Seven Deadly Sins”
Lenten Meditations
Fr. David Curry
Lent 2009

(A detail from a larger painting by Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1480) on the Seven Deadly Sins.
The original is now at the Museo del Prado, Madrid)

Peccatum poena peccati. Sin is the punishment of sin, St. Augustine observes. The contemplation of sin is an important feature of the moral life of Christians. After all, one cannot speak about sin without reference to God. The confession of sin is equally a confession of praise to God.

The Christian moral tradition speaks of seven deadly sins. Why seven?
Read the rest of this entry »

The Rev David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon at St John’s Church, Port Williams, for Choral Evensong, Lent II, based on St Mark 14:27-52.

“He left the linen cloth and ran away naked.”

Last words are often the most compelling or at least in this case, perhaps, the most perplexing. Who was this young man “with nothing but a linen cloth about his body” and who ends up running away naked? It must seem odd in what is otherwise a most disturbing and deeply touching scene, the scene of Christ’s agony of prayer in Gethsemane, his betrayal by a kiss and his arrest. It is all part of the intensity of the drama of the Passion. But how odd!

And what are we to make of the story of God’s covenant promise to Noah juxtaposed with the story of the building of the Tower of Babel with its last words? “There the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” Read the rest of this entry »