Christ Church

He was known of them in the breaking of the bread

April is the cruelest month of all, T.S. Eliot averred in The Waste Land, making a deliberate contrast with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that “when April with his showers sweet …then do folk long to go on pilgrimage.” But there is a journey, a pilgrimage of the soul through good and ill, a pilgrimage of the understanding, snow and wind and ice notwithstanding. It is all about the Resurrection and it speaks to the sufferings and the sorrows that darken our hearts especially at the loss of lives such as those of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team. We remembered them by name at the Wednesday assembly, placing them and the hearts of those who mourn and are in sorrow with God. Such, too, belongs to the Resurrection.

It gives us a way to face the hard and difficult things of human experience, the things of suffering and death. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb in grief and sorrow only to encounter the Risen Christ; “Touch me not,” he says to her. Doubting Thomas, so-called, encounters the Risen Christ behind closed doors; “reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust in into my side; and be not faithless, but believing,” Christ says. And all in the same chapter! Touch not and touch! Nothing affirms so completely the way in which the Resurrection speaks to the radical nature of human individuality and to the realities of the human body, to human experience, and, most importantly, to the forms of human knowing; yet without being collapsed into them. We are raised up to behold things in a new light, to find grace and consolation even in the midst of our sorrows and griefs. The Resurrection strengthens us.

The Resurrection accounts all turn on one fundamental principle: Christ is the great teacher of the Resurrection whose encounter with us overcomes every paradox, every contradiction. We are challenged to see the past in a new way, to see ourselves in a new way, to think the body in a new way. One of the distinctive features of the Resurrection is that it is inescapably a bodily event. It happens in the body and provides us with a new way to think about the dignity and truth of our humanity. Our bodies matter; they are part and parcel of our individual identity, part and parcel of the truth of our humanity as found in God.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Leo the Great (c. 400-461), Bishop of Rome, Teacher of the Faith (source):

O God our Father,
who madest thy servant Leo strong in the defence of the faith:
we humbly beseech thee
so to fill thy Church with the spirit of truth
that, being guided by humility and governed by love,
she may prevail against the powers of evil;
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 1:6-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:13-19

Leo is believed to have been born in Tuscany and served as a deacon and papal advisor before being chosen pope in 440. He is one of the most important popes of the early church because of his achievements in theology, canon law, and church administration.

Leo defended uniformity in church government and doctrine and bolstered the primacy of the Roman see in the church structure. In his letters and sermons, he argued that, as heir to St. Peter, the bishop of Rome holds a supreme authority over the church and all other bishops. This was not universally accepted during Leo’s papacy, but it strongly influenced the future course of the church.

His greatest accomplishment was as a theologian. When the Council of Chalcedon was convened in 451, Leo wrote a Tome to Bishop Flavian of Constantinople that contained a clear and cogent statement of the dual nature of Jesus Christ. He described Christ’s two natures, divine and human, as permanently united “unconfusedly, unchangeably, undivisibly, and inseparably”. When Leo’s letter was read aloud at the Council, the delegates cried, “Peter has spoken through Leo”, and his teaching was accepted as defining the doctrine of the Person of Christ.

Twice during Leo’s pontificate, Rome came under threat from barbarian invaders. In 452, Attila and his Huns advanced on Rome after sacking Milan, but Leo saved the city by persuading Attila to accept tribute and withdraw. In 455, however, he was not as successful dealing with Genseric, leader of the Vandals. Leo did persuade the Vandals not to destroy Rome and murder the populace, but they plundered the city for a fortnight and took prisoners to Africa. Leo sent priests and alms to the captives.

Leo was the first pope to be buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Artwork: Alessandro Algardi, The Meeting of St. Leo I and Attila, 1646-53. Marble relief, Altar of St. Leo the Great, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican.

The collect for today, The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canada, 1962):

WE beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that, as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 7:10-15
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:26-38

Artwork: Jacopo Pontormo, Annunciation, 1527-28. Fresco, Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicità, Florence. Photograph taken by admin, 17 May 2010.

(This commemoration has been transferred from 25 March.)

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

This text has carried us through Holy Week and Easter beginning with Palm Sunday . March 25th was Palm Sunday but that date is The Feast of the Annunciation , a feast of great significance for our understanding of the Christian Faith. It marks the conception of Christ in the womb of Mary through her ‘yes’ to God in response to the Angelic Salutation: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee” and that she “shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call his name Jesus.”

Nine months later, we celebrate Christ’s nativity, his birth at Bethlehem. But the conjunction of the Annunciation with Christ’s Passion is immensely significant and reminds us of the inescapable connection between Christmas and Easter , for his “Christmas Day and Good Friday are but the morning and the evening of one and the same day,” as John Donne notes, even as we have noted that Easter Day and The Octave Day of Easter , yesterday, are but the morning and the evening of one and the same day, the day of Resurrection.

But why the Annunciation on the Tuesday after Easter Week? Because the Passion and the Resurrection take utter priority. The Annunciation is for the sake of the Passion and the Resurrection; the meaning of the Incarnation is fully realised in the events that belong to the redemption of our humanity. As Luther, the father of Protestantism, and as Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, both understand, it is per Mariam ad Jesum , through Mary to Jesus. “Mary,” says Luther, “does not want us to come to Mary but through her to Jesus Christ.”

This brings us to the critical and important role of Mary in the work of human redemption. In contrast to Jesus as “just as man” in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary is at once just a woman and more than just a woman. She is the very exemplar and embodiment of our humanity considered in and of itself in its truth and purity. Why? And How? Why? Because of the logic of salvation. Christ cannot be the redeemer of humanity, wounded and broken as a result of sin, if he himself is a sinner. He becomes sin for us only by becoming fully human through the body he assumes from Mary. He does so to free us from all sin and all death. He is “like us in all respects save sin.” Sin after all is privative, a negative; it makes us less than ourselves. She, by extension, too, is understand in a number of theological traditions to be without sin for the sake of Christ’s pure humanity without which he cannot be our redeemer.

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“The same day at evening”

Time, it seems, has stopped. We rest in the morning and the evening of the new Sabbath of the Day of Resurrection, it seems, with Mary coming early in the morning on the first day of the week to the tomb and finding it empty. She runs and tells Simon Peter and John and they both run and find that what she said is indeed true. Now, it is “the same day at evening.” Yet, we are behind closed doors.

It is a powerful image. Like the disciples, we too are behind closed doors out of fear. Our culture is very much the culture of closed doors, the culture of the various ghettoes of our minds, like so many gated communities, as it were. We hear only what we want to hear and see only what we want to see. But the more serious point is our fearfulness, our uncertainties and our anxieties.

We are behind the closed doors of our minds because we are uncertain about ourselves, about our world, and about the very idea of truth. This shows itself in a myriad of ways: from the increasing intolerance about diverse opinions about identity politics to the increasing fragility of ourselves as a self. It means a loss of confidence in being able to think and proclaim what belongs to the Christian faith and to the ways in which it engages the world. Yet the Resurrection breaks open the closed doors of our minds and our souls.

The Gospel for the Octave Day of Easter places us imaginatively on “the same day at evening” to counter all of our fears and uncertainties. Something happens behind closed doors that belongs to the Easter message of Resurrection. It changes everything. It changes us. Such is the Resurrection. It gives us a new perspective and a new understanding about ourselves. We are freed to God and are set in motion.

What is that motion? In today’s Gospel, it is about “the forgiveness of sins”proclaimed by the Apostolic Church. On “the same day at evening,” Christ breathes on the disciples and signals to them and us what his word and action means. “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” he says.“Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” It is called the power of the keys.

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Monday April 9th, Eve of Annunciation (transf.)
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, April 10th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Wednesday, April 11th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, April 12th
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms

Friday, April 13th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, April 15th, Second Sunday after Easter
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, April 17th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club : Madeline Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, and Bandi, The Accusation

Saturday, May 12th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Lobster Supper – Parish Hall

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

Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may alway serve thee in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 5:4-12
The Gospel: St. John 20:19-23

Artwork: The risen Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room, 6th-century mosaic, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna.

Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Christos Anesté! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alethos Aneste! Alleluia! Alleluia! It is the ancient Christian proclamation and greeting at Easter. Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! And such too is a little lesson in Greek and Hebrew!

What is it all about? It is all about the Resurrection. Easter, itself an ancient Germanic word for the Goddess of Spring, has been co-opted for the spiritual spring of our souls. “All the winter of our sins, long and dark is flying” and suddenly there is an entirely new way to think about reality and about our humanity, about death and life.

The Resurrection changes everything. It means that death is no longer the final statement. Death itself has been changed, a point which John Donne makes very clear in his famous sonnet, Death Be Not Proud. Death is not “mighty and dreadful;” it is not the master of our lives. It is instead “slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.” Death shall be no more; death is dead. Good Friday marks the death of death with God’s death in Christ on the Cross. Easter or the Pascha, the term used in other cultures that refers to the new Passover from death to life in Christ, celebrates new birth, new life; in short, a new creation.

The Resurrection makes no sense apart from the Passion of Christ and vice-versa. That, too, is part of the radical meaning of the Resurrection of Christ. Something new and comforting, a blessing even, is found in the suffering. And so we are given a new way to think about the realities of the human situation with respect to sin and sorrow, pain and death. It is not nothing but neither is it everything. So, too, with respect to our bodily reality. Our bodies are not nothing but neither are they everything. The Resurrection is the strongest possible affirmation of our bodies as being an integral part of our human identity and personality.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Once again, we are presented with a lesson from The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, often attributed to St. Luke. Once again a Gospel reading from The Gospel according to St. Luke. Once again, the word of Resurrection is being shown to us and we are being opened out to its meaning. And once again suffering and death are inescapably made an essential part of the teaching of the Resurrection along with repentance and forgiveness.

“To you is the word of this salvation sent,” Paul says to a group of Hebrews in the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia. The message of Resurrection arises in the context of the Hebrew Scriptures, among “the sons of the family of Abraham.” As Luke puts it, too, the idea of the Resurrection comes to us through “the open[ing of] their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures.” Yet all of this builds upon the story of Christ on the road to Emmaus, upon the tangible realities of Christ being with us.

“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and blood, as ye see me have.” And in addition he asks “have ye here any food? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey-comb.” It is all part of the testimony to the reality of the Resurrection that “he took it, and did eat before them.” It is the Risen Christ who teaches us about the resurrection and its radical meaning.

It does not mean the annihilation of nature but its transformation and perfection. The body and the physical world are not everything; they are not self-sufficient and self-explanatory, but neither are they nothing. Here Jesus uses both the Scriptures and the things of the natural world to teach us the meaning of our humanity in God. He speaks to our fears and worries, to our anxieties and our uncertainties. He confirms his presence with us in simple ways, even through such simple things as “a piece of broiled fish and of an honey-comb.” This is part of the power of these Gospel stories.

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The collect for today, Tuesday in Easter Week, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who through thine only begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life: We humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special grace thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 13:26-41
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:36-48

Artwork: Christ’s evening appearance to the disciples behind closed doors, c. 1350. Fresco, Visoki Decani Monastery, Kosovo.