Christ Church

The collect for today, the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 3:4-9
The Gospel: St. Mark 7:31-37

Artwork: Bartholomeus Breenbergh, Christ Healing a Deaf-Mute, 1635. Oil on panel, Louvre, Paris.

In the beginning God … In the beginning the Word

And so it begins. It has become a tradition to have the Head Boy and Head Girl read the two lessons which have become a special feature of the first two Chapel services. The two readings are Genesis 1. 1-5 and John 1. 1-5; two of the most profound texts that belong to intellectual thought and reflection. The reading from John is most clearly and obviously a kind of complement and commentary on the passage from Genesis. These readings from the Jewish Scriptures, and the Christian New Testament are also complemented by a wonderful passage from the Islamic Scriptures, the Qur’an. The “Originator (Badi) of heaven and earth. When He decrees a thing, He says only ‘Be!’ And it is.”

We begin with the radical concept of God and in a way which challenges our contemporary culture. These readings show the intimate and necessary relationship between power and wisdom. Power without wisdom, I think we know, is deadly, destructive, and dangerous. God speaks reality into being. God as Word (Logos) is an essential feature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These passages are poetic and philosophical. They are not ‘science’ in its modern sense though they are precisely what science in all its forms presupposes, namely the world as being in principle intelligible. They also belong to an older sense of scientia as an inward habit or virtue, a way of thinking and living.

In principle. En arche, In principia – for ‘beginning’ means principle as well. The idea of Creation is set before us in a much more radical way than is commonly understood or rather misunderstood. God does not make the world like a clock-maker to use a famous early modern image. Creation is about the animating principle which creates and sustains what is created. Creation is always about a relation to a Creator who by definition is not any one of the things of creation. Thomas Aquinas makes the point beautifully that God is “the beginning and end of all things, and especially of rational creatures.” In the Qur’an, eight of the ninety-nine names of God, of Allah, refer to Allah as the source of all that is: al-Badi (Absolute Cause), al-Bari (Producer), al-Khaliq (Creator), al-Mubdi (Beginner), al-Muqtadir (All-Determiner), al-Musawwir (Fashioner), al-Qadir (All-Powerful), and al-Qahhar (Dominator). Such expressions emphasize that God is none of the things which God makes. In short, ‘there is no God but God’ understood as the principle of the being and the intelligibility of things.

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The collect for bishops and other pastors, in commemoration of Robert Wolfall, Priest (source):

Almighty and everlasting God,
who didst call thy servant Robert Wolfall to proclaim thy glory
by a life of prayer and the zeal of a true pastor:
keep constant in faith the leaders of thy Church
and so bless thy people through their ministry
that the Church may grow into the full stature
of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Rev. Robert Wolfall was vicar of the Parish of West Harptree, Somerset, when he became chaplain to Martin Frobisher’s third Arctic expedition to Canada. On 3 September 1578, Rev’d Wolfall presided at the first recorded Holy Eucharist in what is now Canadian territory: Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island.

The service was held on the ship Anne Francis, whose captain later wrote:

Master Wolfall …. preached a godly sermon, which being ended he celebrated also a Communion upon the land …. The celebration of the divine mystery was the first sign, seal and confirmation of Christ’s name, death and passion ever known in these quarters. Master Wolfall made sermons and celebrated the Communion at sundry other times in several and sundry ships, because the whole company could never meet together at anyone place.

A few weeks later, Frobisher abandoned the hope of establishing a permanent settlement on Baffin Island and the expeditionary fleet returned home to England. Anglicans would not celebrate Holy Communion in Canada again for almost a century.

A commemoration of Robert Wolfall, written by Dr. William Cooke, Vice-President of the Toronto branch of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, is posted here. (See page 5 of pdf document.)

The Canadian Encyclopedia entry on “The First Thanksgiving in North America” is posted here.

A plaque commemorating Rev. Wolfall was recently placed on the inside wall of his parish church. The photograph was kindly sent to us by former Royal Navy Chaplain The Rev. Anthony Marks.

“By the grace of God, I am what I am”

“Standing on the promises” is an old evangelical hymn composed by Russell Kelso Carter, professor of chemistry, natural science, civil engineering and mathematics at the Pennsylvania Military Academy in 1886, just four years after the building of this Church. Some of you may know it. “Standing, standing/ standing on the promises of Christ my Saviour,/ Standing, standing,/ I’m standing on the promises of God.” It refers to the promises of God and signals the sure, rock-fast nature of those promises even in the face of “the howling storms of doubt and fear.” How? “By the living word of God.” It belongs, I think, to Paul’s message in today’s epistle.

But how do we stand? There are the things which God wants and promises for us and then there is our relation to such things. Paul talks about our standing on the gospel which has been preached to us and which has been received by us “by which also ye are saved,” he says. But he adds a conditional clause; “if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.” At issue is the living word of God in us.

The promises are not to be taken for granted. They are given, to be sure. Paul goes on to talk about the Faith in more-or-less creedal terms and about his own early relation to the proclamation of the gospel – “I persecuted the Church of God,” he says in an honest and confessional way. How then does he now stand in relation to the gospel? As “the least of the Apostles,” he suggests, but nonetheless an Apostle – one who is sent. Such a standing and such a sending are nothing less than acts of grace: for it is “such a measure of thy grace” that allows us to “run the way of thy commandments” so that we “may obtain thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure” as today’s Collect puts it. Something is required on our part, to be sure, and yet, what is wanted has its source solely, utterly, and completely in God. Grace is what comes from God to us, but we are not merely the passive recipients of God’s grace; we have to run with it that it may define and shape us. “By the grace of God, I am what I am,” Paul states, aware of the transition and transformation from persecutor to follower and even more, to being an Apostle, to being who he is solely by the grace of God.

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The collect for today, the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running the way of thy commandments, may obtain thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
The Gospel: St Luke 18:9-14

Artwork: John Everett Millais, The Pharisee and the Publican, from Illustrations to `The Parables of Our Lord’, 1864. Relief print on paper, Tate Collections, London.

The new list of discussion books for Christ Church Book Club is now available. The next series will kick off on Tuesday, 17 September, at 7:00pm, when the featured books will be The Kingdom of the Blind, by Louise Penny, and Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino.

Click here for the full schedule of books and other information.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Aidan (d. 651), Monk of Iona, Missionary, first Bishop and Abbot of Lindisfarne (source):

O loving God, who didst call thy servant Aidan from the Peace of a cloister to re-establish the Christian mission in northern England, and didst endow him with gentleness, simplicity, and strength: Grant, we beseech thee, that we, following his example, may use what thou hast given us for the relief of human need, and may persevere in commending the saving Gospel of our Redeemer Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
The Gospel: St Matthew 19:27-30

Artwork: St Aidan, 19th-century stained glass, from the East window, North transept, Cartmel Priory, England.

The collect for today, the Feast of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O God, who didst send thy messenger, John the Baptist, to be the forerunner of the Lord, and to glorify thee by his death: Grant that we, who have received the truth of thy most holy Gospel, may bear our witness thereunto, and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Jeremiah 1:17-19
The Gospel: St. Mark 6:17-29

Artwork: Rogier van der Weyden, Beheading of St. John the Baptist (right panel of St. John Altarpiece), 1455-60. Oil on oak panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo, Doctor of the Church (source):

O merciful Lord,
who didst turn Augustine from his sins to be a faithful bishop and teacher:
grant that we may follow him in penitence and godly discipline,
till our restless hearts find their rest in thee;
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: 2 Timothy 4:1-8
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:13

Artwork: Titian, Saint Augustine, first half 16th century. Oil on oak panel, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice.

The collect for a Missionary, in commemoration of The Venerable Robert McDonald (1829-1913), Archdeacon, Missionary to the Western Arctic, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, our heavenly Father, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thy blessed Apostles and send them forth to preach thy Gospel of salvation unto all the nations: We bless thy holy Name for thy servant Robert McDonald, whose labours we commemorate this day, and we pray thee, according to thy holy Word, to send forth many labourers into thy harvest; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 12:24-13:5
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:13-24a

Robert McDonald was born in Point Douglas, Red River Colony (in present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba). He was the second of ten children born to a Scottish immigrant and his Ojibway wife. Ordained a Church of England priest in 1852, he ministered among the Ojibway people for almost ten years, mastering the Ojibway language and translating parts of the Bible.

He was chosen to establish a Church Missionary Society mission at Fort Yukon, a settlement then believed to be in British territory but now located within Alaska. Reaching Yukon in October 1862, Robert McDonald was the first Protestant missionary designated for mission work in that territory. He ministered to the Gwitch’in and other aboriginal peoples in northwestern parts of North America for over forty years, during which time he baptised 2000 adults and children.

In 1870, he worked among peoples along the Porcupine River (Old Crow) and later settled in Fort MacPherson on the Peel River, in present-day Northwest Territories. He married Julia Kutuq, a local Gwitch’in woman, in 1876; together they had nine children. He was appointed Archdeacon of the Mackenzie Diocese in 1875.

Archdeacon McDonald developed the first writing system for the Gwitch’in language. (The Gwitch’in Athapaskan language is also known as Tukudh.) With the help of Gwitch’in people, including his wife Julia, he translated the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, and compiled a Tukudh hymnal. Finally, in 1911, he published a dictionary and grammar of Tukudh.

Soon after retiring in 1904, he returned to Winnipeg where he died in 1913. He is buried in the cemetery of St John’s Cathedral.

McDonald’s translation of the Book of Common Prayer is posted online here and his grammar and dictionary here.

More biographical information on The Ven. Robert McDonald may be found online at these sites:

• Virtual Museum Canada
• Anglican History: Leaders of the Canadian Church
• Manitoba Historical Society