Christ Church

“In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world”

Jesus’ words are strong and wonderful words. They capture an important feature of the Christian understanding, one which, perhaps, we have forgotten. The Resurrection changes how we look on the world and on our experiences in the world. The Resurrection is cosmic in scope. The celebration of human redemption equally embraces the idea of the redemption of the world. That is really what is meant by the term ‘overcoming’.

Today is, or was, commonly called Rogation Sunday. Rogation is about asking. Prayer, in its most basic sense, is about asking. To ask for something recognizes that you don’t have something which you need or would like to have. The idea of asking is itself a kind of reality check on the human situation. It recognizes that we are incomplete. Asking means looking to another for what we do not have but want and need. The ultimate Other is God. Asking is a fundamental feature of prayer. And of the possibilities of education, of learning, too. The passionate desire (eros) to know means recognising that you do not know.

Asking is complemented by another fundamental feature of prayer, namely, praise. Prayer and praise are important features of Rogationtide. Prayer is to be understood in a much bigger and broader sense than what we might ordinarily think. Prayer is large in its scope. As Richard Hooker puts it, “prayer signifies all the service we ever do unto God.” In other words, prayer in its largest sense embraces the whole of our lives. Our lives are to be understood as lives of prayer and praise.

The liberating factor is that prayer and praise place us with God. Nothing need stand between us and God. Why not? Because of Christ’s death and resurrection. We are, you might say, freed to God. Prayer and praise are about that freedom.

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Monday, May 30th, Rogation Monday
7:30pm King’s Chorale Rehearsal – Christ Church

Tuesday, May 31st, Rogation Tuesday
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies’ Mtg. – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Thursday, June 2nd, Ascension Day
7:00pm Holy Communion

Saturday, June 4th
7:30pm King’s Chorale Concert

Sunday, June 5th, Sunday after Ascension
8:00am Holy Communion
9:30am Holy Communion – KES
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30pm Evening Prayer at Christ Church

Upcoming events:

Sunday, June 12th, 7:00pm
As part of the Relay for Life, Christ Church will host “An Inspirational Concert with Rachel MacLean”. No admission cost but a food donation for Harvest House is requested.

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: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Last Supper, 1745-47. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris.

The collect for today, the Feast of The Venerable Bede (673-735), Monk, Historian, Doctor of the Church (source):

Almighty God, maker of all things,
whose Son Jesus Christ gave to thy servant Bede
grace to drink in with joy
the word which leadeth us to know thee and to love thee:
in thy goodness
grant that we also may come at length to thee,
the source of all wisdom,
and stand before thy face;
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.

For The Epistle: Wisdom 7:15-22
The Gospel: St Matthew 13:47-52

Click here to read more on The Venerable Bede.

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Augustine (d. c. 605), first Archbishop of Canterbury (source):

O Lord our God, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thine apostles and send them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless thy holy name for thy servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating thy Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom thou dost call and send may do thy will, and bide thy time, and see thy glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 5:17-20a
The Gospel: St Luke 5:1-11

Celtic Christianity had taken root in Britain and Ireland by the end of the third century. In the fifth century, however, Britain was overrun by non-Christian invaders from northern Europe: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

In 596, Pope Gregory the Great chose Augustine, prior of a monastery at Rome, to head a mission to convert the pagan English. After Gregory consecrated Augustine bishop, the missionary party landed in Kent in 597. The dominant ruler of Anglo-Saxon England was the heathen King Ethelbert of Kent, whose wife Bertha was a Christian princess of the Franks. The king, although initially uninterested in Christianity, allowed Augustine and his companions to live in his territory and freely preach the gospel. Within four years, the king and several thousand of his people had been converted and baptised.

After his consecration as archbishop, Augustine built the first cathedral at Canterbury. Pope Gregory had initially planned to organise the church in England with metropolitan sees at the old Roman centres of London and York. London, however, was in the hands of a hostile king, and Canterbury was therefore chosen as Augustine’s seat. The people of London were later brought to the faith through the preaching of Augustine’s companion Mellitus.

Augustine established a monastery just outside Canterbury’s city walls, originally dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul and later known as St. Augustine’s.

Augustine tried but failed to secure the co-operation of Celtic bishops in evangelisation of the Anglo-Saxons. Beyond south-east England, missionary efforts unrelated to Augustine’s were successful in converting the English. The most important of these was the Celtic mission from Iona.

Augustine also helped Ethelbert to write the earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon laws.

Click here for St Augustine’s page at the website of The Archbishop of Canterbury.

“What mean ye by this service?”

It was the Exodus text that framed our Holy Week reflections. But it extends, I think, into our Eastertide meditations, particularly today. What do we mean by this service of Morning Prayer, I wonder?

So much is set before us in the readings and the canticles, the hymns and the prayers. In the ten-second sound bite culture of our consumer world and day, it must seem to be altogether too much. So I want to try to help you understand a little bit of what we are doing in this service and to see if we can’t begin to appreciate what God is doing for us and with us in this service. It is really all about our life with God in the mercies of Jesus Christ.

St. James, in the epistle reading at Holy Communion for today, exhorts us to “receive with meekness the implanted word.” Meekness or humility is about our openness to God’s word. The psalmist notes that “blessed are all they that fear the Lord and walk in his ways” (Ps. 128, vs.1). Fear, of course, means holding God in awe and wonder because God is God, we might say, and far more than we can desire or imagine. In the Scriptural view of things, there is something wonderful about God making himself known to us, about God’s revealing his will and presence to us.  Our first lesson this morning from The Book of Exodus reminds us of both. At issue is whether we are open to his word and will and presence.

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“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away.”

There is a great fearfulness in our own age and culture. It goes beyond the ceaseless spectacle of a world of wars that is constantly before us in such things as the unrest in the Middle East or in the parade of natural catastrophes such as floods in Manitoba and fires in northern Alberta. It concerns the emptiness within the soul of a culture when it can no longer say what it is that is worth living for, when it can no longer identify the principles and the ideals that dignify our humanity.

When we can no longer say what makes life worth living for, then there is certainly nothing worth dying for either. There is nothing to give your life to. There is only the emptiness within, a darkness inside, out of which comes such frightening and senseless acts of violence, death and self-destruction that have become a regular feature of our world. The essence of such acts is their meaninglessness born out of a sense of the meaninglessness of contemporary life. As the philosopher, Peter Kreeft, has noted, the fear for our culture is not the fear of death as it was for the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, nor is it the fear of Hell as it was for the mediaeval cultures – Christian, Jewish and Islamic; no, it is the fear of meaninglessness itself. There is no objective truth to which we should conform ourselves and hold ourselves accountable. This is our fearfulness, the fearfulness we have to confront and overcome.

We confront it in the Gospels. Jesus confronts our fearfulness. The Gospel of the Resurrection is especially about his overcoming of our fearfulness. The message of the angel to the women, coming early to the tomb and finding it empty, was “be not afraid”. Jesus comes into the midst of the disciples whether they are huddled behind closed doors in fear or on the road to Emmaus in flight from Jerusalem in fear.

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Tuesday, May 24th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies’ Mtg. – Parish Hall

Thursday, May 26th
1:30-3:00pm Seniors’ Drop-In

Friday, May 27th
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
3:30pm Holy Communion – Gladys Manning Home

Sunday, May 29th, Fifth Sunday after Easter
8:00am Holy Communion
9:30am Holy Communion – KES
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30pm Evening Prayer at Christ Church

Upcoming events:

Saturday, June 4th, 7:30pm
King’s Chorale Concert (under the direction of Bill Perrot). Tickets are $10.00 (at the door or phone 798-2911 to reserve). Come out for this wonderful musical event. This choir hails from King’s County and will be featuring the music of Jongen, Howells, Fauré, Casals, Martin and Vaughan Williams.

Sunday, June 12th, 7:00pm
As part of the Relay for Life, Christ Church will host “An Inspirational Concert with Rachel MacLean”. No admission cost but a food donation for Harvest House is requested.

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

O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 1:17-21
The Gospel: St John 16:5-15

Artwork: Nicolas Poussin, Seven Sacraments: Eucharist II, 1647. Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Dunstan (909-88), Archbishop of Canterbury, Restorer of Monastic Life (source):

Almighty God,
who raised up Dunstan to be a true shepherd of the flock,
a restorer of monastic life
and a faithful counsellor to those in authority:
give to all pastors the same gifts of your Holy Spirit
that they may be true servants of Christ and of all his people;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Ecclesiasticus 44:1-7
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47