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Fr. David Curry has compiled his four Lenten Meditations on the Parable of the Prodigal Son into a single pdf document, which can be downloaded by clicking here.

This is the fourth in a series of four Lenten meditations on the Prodigal Son. The first meditation is posted here, and the second here, and the third here.

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

The Feast of the Annunciation of Mary, more often than not, falls within the Lenten season and, indeed, often within Passiontide, as it does this year. Mary’s word to the angel Gabriel is, of course, Mary’s great ‘yes’ to God and reminds us of an important feature of the Christian faith. It is all God’s grace, we might say, but it also all about us, about our response and embrace of God’s grace and mercy. In a way, Mary’s fiat mihi is equally the measure of our Lenten journeying. It is altogether about our active and attentive acquiescence to God’s will and purpose for our humanity. Lent is the divine project for the renovation of our humanity, wounded and broken by sin, restored and renewed by grace.

Mary plays an altogether crucial role in that project. She is not only the Mother of God, the theotokos, as orthodox Christianity insists, the one through whom the Son of God becomes the Son of Man, becomes fully human while remaining fully divine, she is also the one who “mothers each new grace” in us, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it. She holds “high motherhood/towards all our ghostly good/ And plays in grace her part/About man’s beating heart.” Lovely lines, I think, and ones which speak to our Lenten endeavours to ponder the mystery of Christ’s Parable of the Prodigal Son, perhaps better called the Parable of the Two Lost Sons, and to ponder that mystery, in part, through Henri Nouwen’s prayerful meditation upon the Parable and its artistic representation by Rembrandt in what is probably the last and, perhaps, greatest painting of Rembrandt, perhaps one of the greatest paintings ever, his Return of the Prodigal Son. As Nouwen suggests in his subtitle, it is the Story of Homecoming, the homecoming which speaks to all our souls.

We have had occasion to consider the two sons. There is a sense in which our attention is drawn, first, to the younger son and, then, to the elder son but what holds those moments together, what unites every moment in the parable itself, is something other than the two sons; it is the Father. More precisely, it is the love of the Father. In thinking about each of the sons we can hardly ignore the role and figure of the Father, to be sure. But our task tonight is to ponder the mystery of the love of the Father. It may seem paradoxical, but in so doing we are also, I think, pondering the mystery of the Mother of God, the one who embodies the very truth of our humanity considered simply in itself in terms of the true meaning of our life with God. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” Mary says. We behold her who says, “Be it unto me according to thy word.”

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This is the third in a series of four Lenten meditations on the Prodigal Son. The first meditation is posted here, and the second here. Footnotes have been omitted in the following text. To download the complete text, including footnotes, as a pdf document, click here.

“Blessed are those servants,
whom their lord when he cometh shall find watching.”

It is commonly called The Parable of the Prodigal Son. Rembrandt’s painting is called The Return of the Prodigal Son. Henri Nouwen’s book bears the same title, The Return of the Prodigal Son, but provides as a subtitle, “A Story of Homecoming”. The missing indefinite or definite article before homecoming is telling. Why? Because the parable is very explicit. “A certain man had two sons.” There is more than one leaving and therefore the  possibility of more than one homecoming. In some sense the parable is universal; it is about the homecoming of our humanity which is, in some sense, too, about our abiding in the compassionate love of the Father as Bernard of Clairvaux’s Lenten sermons on Qui habitat, (Psalm 91, Psalm 90 in the Vulgate) suggest. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide under the protection of the God of heaven.”

Two sons. We forget that the dynamic of the story is not just with respect to the younger son but also includes the elder son. Such is the subtlety and complexity of the parable, the commentary tradition upon it, and Rembrandt’s painting, itself a kind of commentary. And in very intriguing ways.

Rembrandt’s painting focuses, to be sure, on the return of the prodigal son but that is not the actual center of the painting. The iconic scene of the son’s embrace by the Father is off-center, to the left in the painting, actually. To the right is the elder son, his face illumined, like the scene of the embrace of Father and younger son, but the center of the painting is the space between the Father’s embrace of the younger son, and the stern and critical gaze, it is fair to say, of the elder son. Unlike the prodigal son, ironically, the face of the elder son and brother is visible.

The parable is really the parable of two lost sons as Nouwen suggests. In this he is hardly unique. The interpretation of Scripture does not happen in a vacuum. And among the more intriguing interpretations of the parable are those that deal with the elder son. It seems that you don’t have to go away to be lost. The distance between the Father’s embrace of the younger son and the elder brother’s gaze is most telling.

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This is the second of four Lenten meditations on the Prodigal Son. The previous meditation is posted here.

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross and follow me”

Matthew’s familiar words are complemented by Peter’s words from his First Epistle, “if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in this name.” These scriptural passages are appointed to be read at the commemoration of a martyr; they speak of the meaning of our Christian identity and about the nature of the Christian pilgrimage. Tonight, in the week of The Second Sunday in Lent, we commemorate Perpetua and her Companions, third century martyrs. “Another lives in me,” Perpetua is reported to have said. It is another marvelous line that captures so much of the Christian witness and identity.

Somehow these readings also speak directly to our Lenten pilgrimage and connect to our meditation on the Parable of the Prodigal Son by way of Henri Nouwen’s reflection on Rembrandt’s 1668 painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son. Throughout the centuries of Christian thought, that parable has been the occasion of many commentaries. Rembrandt’s painting, we might say, is itself a kind of commentary on the parable and its significance with respect to the over-arching themes of repentance and reconciliation, themes which are specific as well to the season of Lent.

Self-denial and suffering are features of Lent that draw us into the mystery of Christ’s passion, into the mystery of human redemption accomplished through the reconciliation between God and Man in Jesus Christ. The parable, too, in the rich commentary tradition speaks to those themes explicitly.

We do not read the Scriptures in a vacuum. We read them as belonging to an interpretative community. The Parable of the Prodigal Son has been read liturgically at certain times of the Christian year in the different ecclesiastical traditions of the wider Church. It is read in our Anglican tradition at Morning Prayer in Year One of the two-year cycle of Office readings on The Second Sunday in Lent, for instance. In the traditions of the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy, there is the Sunday of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in the pre-Lenten season which gives high prominence to this parable as preparing us for Great Lent.

The consequence of this is that there is a rich commentary tradition among what are commonly called the Fathers of the Church, meaning the Patristic period, comprising roughly the first six centuries of the Christian faith. Archbishop Chrysostomos, a contemporary Orthodox archbishop, notes that Henri Nouwen’s meditation on the Prodigal Son by way of Rembrandt’s painting reflects the patristic understanding of the parable even if there are no explicit references to the commentary tradition of the Fathers in that work. Our interest tonight will be to highlight a few of the comments of the Fathers about the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

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“All men are seeking for thee”

It hangs in the Hermitage in what was known then and is known now as St. Petersburg having been acquired by Catherine the Great in 1776, some one hundred and eight or nine years after Rembrandt painted what was probably his last painting before his death in 1669. It is called The Return of the Prodigal Son, perhaps one of the world’s greatest paintings, and the inspiration for Henri Nouwen’s thoughtful and reflective meditation on the Gospel parable that is the subject of the painting.

The parable is the well-known parable from the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel and is known as The Parable of the Prodigal Son. Rembrandt’s painting captures that intense and intimate moment of the son’s return to his father. It is the homecoming of the son. A powerful moment, it both conceals and reveals the larger story. In Luke’s Gospel, this parable is the third of three parables that are all about redemption, about being lost and then found: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost son, the prodigal son. If we were to imagine these parables as being depicted in art, they would form a triptych, such as are found on many altars in Europe; in short, three panels with the two side panels framing the central panel. That central panel, it seems to me, would have to be a depiction of the prodigal son. It is the most intense, the most dynamic and the most compelling of the three parables.

Henri Nouwen’s meditation helps us to appreciate the power of the parable. But it is the painting that has inspired his insight into the radical and universal message that the story presents. The homecoming of the Son to the Father is the very nature of the Christian pilgrimage, the journey of the soul to God, we might say. The wonder of the painting is the miracle of the parable. We have a God and Father to whom we may return. The painting captures the deep compassion of the Father for the wayward son. The truth of our humanity is ultimately to be found in the embrace of the Father’s love, no matter how far and wide we have strayed. Ultimately, we live in the total and unconditional love of the Father.

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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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