Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Feast of St. Luke/Twentieth Sunday after Trinity.
I love Paul’s simple yet poignant phrase that “only Luke is with me.” There is a compelling elegance and simplicity to it. It captures something of the experience of the ministry in its deep truth and meaning. Even more, it captures something of the spiritual significance of Luke, “Evangelist and Physician of the soul,” as the Collect puts it, for the life of the Christian Church. There is something profoundly comforting about the presence of Luke with Paul. And so, too, I hope, with us.
Luke is the Church’s great spiritual director, especially in the long Trinity season where his Gospel provides over half of the Sunday readings. There is a poignant quality to his writings, both in his Gospel and in The Book of The Acts of the Apostles generally attributed to him. The special quality of Luke’s approach to the mystery of God in Christ, the mystery of human redemption is best grasped in Dante’s lovely phrase. Luke, he says, is “scriba mansuetudinis Christi,” the scribe of the gentleness of Christ. The phrase captures the meaning and truth of our spiritual pilgrimage, the journey of the soul to God and with God in Jesus Christ. It highlights a special quality to that pilgrimage – gentleness. Not our gentleness but the gentleness of Christ, which at once provides a profound insight into God’s engagement with our wounded and broken humanity and a strong corrective to the negative views of divine judgment. It complements Marylynne Robinson’s insight in Reading Genesis about the quality of divine restraint or forbearance that points to forgiveness and compassion; the very features of his Gospel.
No one better expresses the idea of an ethic of action rooted in compassion and forgiveness than St. Luke. He has been, accordingly, our principal instructor about such an ethic which speaks so profoundly to the confusions and lunacies of our day where either Profit or the Self is God which neither can possibly be. In the absence of any kind of principled ethical discourse there is only the tyranny of “technocratic totalitarianism” (as Fr. Thomas Plant suggests in his book on the Catechism, King Oswald’s Heirs), whether it is global corporatism, governments or companies, or the subjective tyranny of the self. But here, almost as a kind of counter to those totalizing concepts, we are reminded that “only Luke is with [us]” and that it is Luke who emphasises that Jesus opens our understanding by opening the Scriptures to us, giving us a way to grasp their meaning and their application to our lives. It makes a difference.
Monday, October 19th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club, Coronation Room, Parish Hall: Daisy Dunn’s The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny (2019) and Niall Ferguson’s Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (2021).
Saturday, October 24th
9:00-4:00 Quiet Day (WORCs)
Sunday, October 25th, Trinity 21
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
(Followed by Time of Refreshment & Fellowship, Parish Hall)
Wednesday, October 28th, St. Simon & St. Jude
7:00pm Holy Communion, followed by Seminar on the Catechism, King Oswald’s Heirs # 2, Ch. 12 – end of Ch. 21, Coronation Room, Parish Hall
Sunday, November 1st, All Saints’ Day / Trinity 22
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, November 3rd, All Souls’ Day (transf.)
7:00pm Holy Communion
Sunday, November 8th, Octave Day of All Saints / Trinity 23
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, November 10th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Wednesday, November 11th, Remembrance Day
Windsor Cenotaph
Thursday, November 12th
7:00pm Seminar on the Catechism, King Oswald’s Heirs # 3, Ch. 22-Ch. 40, Coronation Room, Parish Hall.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY God, who calledst Luke the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul: May it please thee that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Timothy 4:5-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-52
Luke was a physician, a disciple of St. Paul and his companion on some of his missionary journeys, and the author of both the third gospel and Acts.
It is believed that St. Luke was born a Greek and a Gentile. According to the early Church historian Eusebius, Luke was born at Antioch in Syria. In Colossians 4:10-14, St. Paul speaks of those friends who are with him. He first mentions all those “of the circumcision”–in other words, Jews–and he does not include Luke in this group. Luke’s gospel shows special sensitivity to evangelising Gentiles. It is only in his gospel that we hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan, that we hear Jesus praising the faith of Gentiles such as the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, and that we hear the story of the one grateful leper who is a Samaritan.
St. Luke first appears in Acts, chapter 16, at Troas, where he meets St. Paul around the year 51, and crossed over with him to Europe as an Evangelist, landing at Neapolis and going on to Philippi, “concluding that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them” (note especially the transition into first person plural at verse 10). Thus, he was apparently already an Evangelist. He was present at the conversion of Lydia and her companions and lodged in her house. He, together with St. Paul and his companions, was recognised by the divining spirit: “She followed Paul and us, crying out, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation’”.
The collect for today, the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-21
The Gospel: St. Matthew 22:1-14
Artwork: Andrey Mironov, The Parable of the Wedding Feast, 2014. Oil on canvas, Private collection.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Etheldreda (d. 679), Queen, Foundress and Abbess of Ely (source):
O eternal God,
who didst bestow such grace on thy servant Etheldreda
that she gave herself wholly to the life of prayer
and to the service of thy true religion:
grant that we may in like manner
seek thy kingdom in our earthly lives,
that by thy guidance
we may be united in the glorious fellowship of thy saints;
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: Philippians 3:7-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:29-34
Artwork: St. Etheldreda, stained glass, St. Augustine Kilburn, London. Photograph taken by admin, 26 September 2015.
The collect for today, the commemoration of Hugh Latimer (1485-1555), Bishop of Worcester, and Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500-1555), Bishop of London, Reformation Martyrs (source):
Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servants Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 3:9-14
The Gospel: St. John 15:20-16:1
Two leaders of the English Reformation were burned at the stake in Oxford on this day in 1555. Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, were removed from their positions and imprisoned after Queen Mary ascended the throne in 1553. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1533, was deposed and taken to Oxford with Latimer and Ridley.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor (c. 1003-1066), King of England (source):
O Sovereign God,
who didst set thy servant Edward upon the throne of an earthly kingdom
and didst inspire him with zeal for the kingdom of heaven:
grant that we may so confess the faith of Christ by word and deed,
that we may, with all thy saints, inherit thine eternal glory;
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 Lesson: Ecclesiasticus 31:8-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:35-40
Artwork: Master of Sir John Fastolf, Saint Edward the Confessor, c. 1430-40. Tempera, gold leaf, and ink, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
The collect for today, Harvest Thanksgiving Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who crownest the year with thy goodness, and hast given unto us the fruits of the earth in their season: Give us grateful hearts, that we may unfeignedly thank thee for all thy loving-kindness, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Additional prayers of Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O ALMIGHTY God and heavenly Father, we glorify thee that we are once more permitted to enjoy the fulfilment of thy gracious promise, that, while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest shall not fail. Blessed be thou, who hast given us the fruits of the earth in their season. Teach us to remember that it is not by bread alone that man doth live; but grant that we may feed on him who is the true bread which cometh down from heaven even Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour; to whom with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
O ALMIGHTY God, whose dearly beloved Son, after his resurrection, sent his Apostles into all the world, and, on the day of Pentecost, endued them with special gifts of the Holy Spirit, that they might gather in the spiritual harvest: We beseech thee to look down from heaven upon the fields, now white unto the harvest, and to send forth more labourers to gather fruit unto eternal life. And grant us grace so to help them with our prayers and offerings, that when the harvest of the earth is ripe, and the time for reaping is come, we, together with them, may rejoice before thee, according to the joy in harvest; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Lesson Isaiah 55:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 6:27-35
Artwork: John La Farge, Angels Representing Thanksgiving, c. 1890-1900. Watercolour, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on Harvest Thanksgiving/Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.
