Christ Church

Dear Friends,

Advent prepares us for the celebration of the great mystery of Christ’s holy birth in the humble and lowly scene of Bethlehem. It prepares us for the great gift, the greatest gift of all, the mystery of Emmanuel, God with us in the special intimacy of Jesus Christ.

It is the gift through which all gifts are given. God’s great generosity, the outpouring of the divine life in Jesus Christ, contrasts with the fearful but too easy narrowness of our own lives. I know, there are no end of anxieties and worries, especially for those on fixed incomes, for those whose retirement years are based on diminished returns from investments, for those who are scrambling with several jobs to make ends meet, and for those who juggle jobs and family. And let us not forget the unemployed.

Generosity is not simply about who has how much and how much more or how much less. It is about giving out of the spirit of giving and without counting the cost. It is about giving out of love for God in the free and wonderful outpouring of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, the Word of God become man for us and for our salvation. The Crucified Christ challenges us all with the power and the poignancy of his suffering and death which brings such wonder and grace to our lives. His gift gives us a way to face all manner of hardships.

We have done remarkably well in this year under the circumstances of changing demographics, a dismal economy and constant yet necessary repairs. Our challenge is to see if we can’t continue to be sustainable as well as to contribute to the life of the Church beyond ourselves; in short, to end the year strongly and as well, if not better, than last year.

The roofing projects, mostly completed, are of the greatest significance for the long term viability of the Parish. In the short term, though, we need your generosity of spirit. We would like not to have to tap into capital. We would like to be able to make some sort of contribution to the work and life of the wider Church.

We have had to undertake more in the way of roofing this year than anticipated. Like everyone else we face mounting costs and expenditures. Because Christmas falls on a Sunday, so does the Octave Day of Christmas. That means that the Sunday after Christmas is New Years’, the beginning of another year. Our effort is to end the year strongly and for that we need your help. It will all come down to the Christmas offerings before January 1st.

I appeal to your generosity. Every little bit counts. Our hope is to end the year with a little bit more so as to give more.

With every blessing in the joy of Christ’s Holy Birth,

(Rev’d) David Curry

The Psalms of David are the Prayer Book and Hymnal of both Jews and Christians alike. Classified in the Jewish understanding as one of the Writings, as distinct from the Law and the Prophets, the Psalms embrace a wide range of poetic forms of expression. The Psalter serves as a way of praying the Scriptures.

Among the many treatises of Augustine, one of the most charming and instructive devotionally is his Enarrations or Expositions on the Book of Psalms. For the English reader, it was only translated in the 19^th century as part of the project of recovering the Patristic heritage of the Church, an interest both in England and on the continent. E.B. Pusey, one of the outstanding figures of the Oxford Movement, provided in December of 1857 an advertisement for the translation into English of Augustine’s work on the Psalms. As he remarks,

St. Augustin was so impressed with the sense of the depth of Holy Scripture, that when it seems to him, on the surface, plainest, then he is the more assured of its hidden depth. True to this belief, St. Augustin pressed out word by word of Holy Scripture, and that, always in dependence on the inward teaching of God the Holy Ghost who wrote it, until he had extracted some fullness of meaning from it. More also, perhaps, than any other work of St. Augustin, this commentary abounds in those condensed statements of doctrinal and practical truth which are so instructive, because at once so comprehensive and so accurate.

This doctrinal and practical sensibility about the Psalms means, of course, that they are read in the light of a certain theology of Revelation. They are not read as a mine of historical information and they are not read ‘critically’ as that term has become to be used by the schools of biblical and historical criticism, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are read with a certain insight into the nature of Scriptural Revelation. In Augustine’s case, they are read entirely from a Christian perspective as bearing constant testimony to Jesus as the fulfilling of the Law.

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“Their sound went out into all the earth,
and their words unto the end of the world.”

Andrew is the Advent saint. Sometimes his feast day anticipates Advent and at other times, it falls within the first week of Advent, as it does this year. In either case, he begins the cycle of the Church’s commemoration of the Saints throughout the course of the year. And, as always, there is something rich and significant about beginnings.

Andrew is recognized as the patron saint of Scotland and, therefore, of New Scotland, Nova Scotia, as well. Scotland, not to mention Nova Scotia, is a long ways from the land of the New Testament, a long ways from the setting of the story of the calling of the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew, and the brothers Zebedee, James and John, a long ways from the sea of Galilee. It reminds us of the missionary impulse of the Christian faith. Which is not to say that Andrew ever laid eyes on either!

Yet, the spiritual point is clear. Those who follow Jesus become the ones who proclaim Jesus and make him known even “unto the ends of the world.” For much of the first millennium or more, Scotland must often to have seemed to be the very end of the world. Perhaps, too, the same might be said of Nova Scotia. And yet, the word has gone forth on the wings of the saints and carried forward by their witness to Jesus Christ. Critical to that witness, as the readings on this feast day reminds us, is the Scripture. The Feast of Andrew belongs to that pageant of Word and Song which is part and parcel of the Advent of Christ.

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The Great ‘O’ Antiphons of Advent

December 16: O Sapientia

O Wisdom, which comes out of the mouth of the Most High, and reaches from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordereing all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.

December 17: O Adonai

O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who appeared in the bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gave him the law in Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

December 18: O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, which stands for an ensign of the people, at whom the kings shall shut their mouths, unto whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.

December 19: O Clavis David

O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel; that opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens: Come and bring the prisoners out of the prison-house, them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

December 20: O Oriens

O Dayspring, Brightness of the Light Everlasting, and Sun of Righteousness: Come and enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

December 21: O Rex Gentium

O King of Nations, and their Desire; the Cornerstone who makes both one: Came and save mankind, whom thou didst make of clay.

December 22: O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all ‚nations and their salvation: Come and save us, O Lord our God.

December 23: O Virgo Virginum

O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any seen like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? The thing which ye behold is divine.

Veni, Veni Emmanuel

O COME, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that morns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
R: Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel,
to thee shall come Emmanuel!

O come, Thou Wisdom, from on high, (O Sapientia)
and order all things far and nigh;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go. R.

O come, o come, Thou Lord of might, (O Adonai)
who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height
in ancient times did give the law,
in cloud, and majesty, and awe. R.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse’s stem, (O Jesse Virgula)
from ev’ry foe deliver them
that trust Thy mighty power to save,
and give them vict’ry o’er the grave. R.

O come, Thou Key of David, come, (O Clavis Davidica)
and open wide our heav’nly home,
make safe the way that leads on high,
that we no more have cause to sigh. R.

O come, Thou Dayspring from on high, (O Oriens)
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night
and death’s dark shadow put to flight. R.

O come, Desire of the nations, bind (O Rex Gentium)
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid every strife and quarrel cease
and fill the world with heaven’s peace. R.

The initial words of the antiphons in reverse of their original order form an acrostic: O Emmanuel, O Rex, O Oriens, O Clavis, O Radix (“virgula” in the hymn), O Adonai, O Sapientia. ERO CRAS can be loosely translated as “I will be there tomorrow”.

Advent Prose

Rorate Caeli

Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.

Be not so very angry, O Lord, neither remember iniquity forever: thy holy cities are a wilderness, Sion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation: our holy and our beautiful house, wherein our fathers praised thee.

Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.

We have sinned, and are as an unclean thing, and we all do fade away as a leaf: and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away; thou hast hid thy face from us: and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.

Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.

Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know me and believe me: I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Saviour: and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, my salvation shall not tarry: I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions: Fear not, for I will save thee: for I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer.

Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.

“There was war in heaven”

Somehow angels are very much with us. They are very much a part of the biblical and spiritual landscape of the great religions of the world. They are found in the Jewish Scriptures, in the Christian New Testament, and in the Koran. They are present from creation to redemption, as it were. There is even in our contemporary secular culture a yearning for a spiritual company and a sense that we are somehow more than cosmic orphans cast adrift in wholly material universe.

But perhaps you still protest and reasonably so. “Are not angels simply the product of our imaginations, the creatures of our minds, as it were?” Creatures of the mind? Better to say creatures who are mind, wholly mind. The angels are pure intellectual beings of immaterial substance. They are the ordered and distinct thoughts of God in creation, the moving principles of his goodness and truth, the invisible reasons for the visible things of the world. And since the intellect transcends the sense, angels cannot be seen except by the mind in thought. The angels are creatures who are mind that only minds can think. Angels belong at the very least to an intellectual tradition that connects with Plato’s Forms and Aristotle’s Spheres; in short, to an intellectual understanding of the universe.

Angels, let us allow, are thinkable, but what does it mean to think with them? After all, there are endless numbers of things which are “able to be thought”. The ancient Collect for Michaelmas speaks of God as having “ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order”. The services of angels are instituted of God and joined with the services of men in a wonderful order. Somehow thinking God means thinking with the angels who are God’s thoughts in creation. We are part of a spiritual community that is far larger than we realize.

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The fifth Sunday in Lent is commonly called Passion Sunday. It marks the beginning of what we might call ‘deep Lent,’ where our thoughts and hearts are more intensely concentrated upon one of the most significant features of the Christian faith, the Passion of Christ.

All is decked in purple hue, the cross is veiled. There is an unmistakable seriousness about Passiontide, even a somber mood. This is, perhaps, difficult and challenging for our culture and age. There are so many fearful things that we confront in the culture and the community, in the global world and in our souls. Why add to that? Well, we aren’t.

Passiontide provides us with strong ways of thinking about the hardest things. Suffering and death, sin and evil, are the deeper concepts that lurk in the corridors of our hearts of fear. Passiontide recognizes how much is hidden from the understanding of ourselves and the hardships or trials or struggles that we all endure, whether self-inflicted or put upon us by the thoughts and actions of others. One of the more poignant aspects of that form of unknowing is captured in the Gospel for Passion Sunday. Jesus says that we do not know for what we are asking. It is a powerful statement about the nature of sinfulness, about our ignorance and our arrogance.

We go into the Passion of Christ so that we may suffer with the one whom we will see suffer on the Cross. Passion is about suffering. Passiontide is about the sufferings of Christ for us and our desire to suffer with him. The suffering and the death are about our sinfulness and evil. It is what Passiontide will ultimately unveil and what Christ will overcome.

Quiet Day
Saturday, March 19th
(9:00-4:45pm)

“A Lenten Pilgrimage: Meditations on Bonaventure’s Journey of the Soul into God”
(sponsored by the Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island)

9:00am Mattins – Hensley Memorial Chapel
9:20am-9:40am – Registration & Refreshments in Convocation Hall
9:45am First Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

11:15am Holy Communion – Hensley Memorial Chapel
St. Joseph (BCP – p. 319 & p. 113)

12:00 Lunch – Stanfield Hall (School Dining Room)

1:30pm Second Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

3:00pm Third Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

4:15pm Evensong – Hensley Memorial Chapel
4:30-4:45 Departure

A Quiet Day is a time for prayer and study and reflection, a part of the Lenten discipline, a part of the spiritual journey of Christian Faith.

The cost for the day is $ 10.00 which includes lunch. Payment can be made on the day itself. If you are interested in attending, all or some of the day, please contact Fr. David Curry.

“Then Herod … sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem”

There is no greater challenge to the cultural celebration of Christmas than the Feast of the Holy Innocents. We like to think that Christmas is for children and for the child in all of us. We might want to think again. God “madest infants to glorify [him] by their deaths.” Now, there is a show-stopper! A real shocker. Try marketing that!

And yet, this is inescapably part of the Christmas story, albeit a part of the story we easily overlook. It recalls us to the inescapable political occasion for the nativity of Christ in Bethlehem – a census for taxation purposes – and then ups the ante in terms of the real-politique of power and domination. Herod embarks upon a policy of infanticide, killing all the little children in Bethlehem. Why? Out of fear for a rival king, the child King of Bethlehem, as he has heard from the Magi. He embarks upon a human scorched earth policy to destroy a potential rival to his power.

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“That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you”

There can be no greater affirmation of the central mystery of the Christian Faith than this Epistle reading from The First Letter of St. John. It echoes, of course, the great Christmas Gospel proclaimed at the Mass of Christmas Night. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God … And the Word was made flesh.”

And that is precisely the point which John is driving home in his Epistle. He is arguing for the absolute and tangible reality of the Incarnation. This man Jesus Christ is “Very God of Very God.”

“That which was from the beginning – heard, seen, looked upon, and handled by our hands is the Word of life.” He bears witness to the divinum mysterium of Christmas. The Word and Son of the Father who is Light and Life is Incarnate; the God made Man is Jesus Christ.

And he is telling us that this is no passing knowledge – a matter for a moment, a mere factoid of idle information – but rather a truth that reveals “eternal life,” the truth upon which our lives ultimately depend for their truth and meaning.

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17^th Century Anglican Marian Devotion: A meditation
upon the Conception of Mary

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

“Until they are good Marians, they shall never be good Christians” avowed Anthony Stafford in 1637, words which apply to every age of Christianity. We meet to honour the female glory of Mary, Virgin and Mother, through whom “salvation to all that will is nigh,” as the poet John Donne puts it, Christ being that “immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,” his conception the immediate consequence of her Annunciation. Yet her annunciation stands upon the necessity of her conception. We meet on the eve of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the week of the Second Sunday in Advent.

There is a certain paradox in this commemoration. On the week which is governed by the pageant of God’s Word Written in the form of the Scriptures we find this minor Holy Day which commemorates a completely non-biblical event, namely Mary’s conception. Yet, this minor commemoration has been in The Book of Common Prayer since 1549 and connects with an older doctrinal and devotional tradition of reflection about the role and place of Mary in the understanding of human redemption.

On one level, we could say it is all rather prosaic. For Mary to exist she had to be conceived. But that only heightens the question. Why the conception? Whether with or without the equally perplexing adjective of immaculate, meaning pure or spotless? Is this not all a bit much and whole lot removed from the biblical perspective? Well, it is outside the Scriptures but it belongs to a form of theological reasoning upon the Scriptures which, after all, have to be thought upon. They are given for our learning. The Conception of Mary belongs to the theological reflection upon the meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. This feast is part of a wonderful Anglican tradition of Marian devotion, but one that is governed by a clearly defined theological understanding.

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