Year: 2009

Prayers and liturgy

Saint Edmund

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Edmund (841-869), King of the East Angles, Martyr (source):

O eternal God,
whose servant Edmund kept faith to the end,
both with thee and with his people,
and glorified thee by his death:
grant us the same steadfast faith,
that, together with the noble army of martyrs,
we may come to the perfect joy of the resurrection life;
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: 1 St Peter 3:14-18
The Gospel: St Matthew 10:16-22

Saint EdmundEdmund was raised a Christian and became king of the East Angles as a young boy, probably when 14 years old. In 869 the Danes invaded his territory and defeated his forces in battle.

According to Edmund’s first biographer, Abbo of Fleury, the Danes tortured the saint to death after he refused to renounce his faith and rule as a Danish vassal. He was beaten, tied to a tree and pierced with arrows, and then beheaded.

His body was originally buried near the place of his death and subsequently transferred to Baedericesworth, modern Bury St Edmunds. His shrine became one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in England, but it was destroyed and his remains lost during the English Reformation.

The cult of St Edmund became very popular among English nobility because he exemplified the ideals of heroism, political independence, and Christian holiness. The Benedictine Abbey founded at Bury St Edmunds in 1020 became one of the greatest in England.

St Edmundsbury Borough Council has posted a history of Saint Edmund’s legend.

Artwork: St Edmund the Martyr, c. 1420-40. Stained glass, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Hilda

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Hilda (614-680), Abbess of Whitby (source):

Saint HildaO eternal God,
who madest the abbess Hilda to shine as a jewel in England
and through her holiness and leadership
didst bless thy Church with newness of life and unity:
so assist us by thy grace
that we, like her, may yearn for the gospel of Christ
and bring reconciliation to those who are divided;
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: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St Matthew 19:27-29

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Margaret

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Margaret (1046-1093), Queen of Scotland, Philanthropist, Reformer of the Church (source):

O God, the ruler of all,
who didst call thy servant Margaret to an earthly throne
and gavest to her both zeal for thy Church and love for thy people,
that she might advance thy heavenly kingdom:
mercifully grant that we who commemorate her example
may be fruitful in good works
and attain to the glorious crown 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 Lesson: Proverbs 31:10-11, 20, 26, 28
The Gospel: St Matthew 13:44-52

William Hole, Landing of St. MargaretSt Margaret was born in Hungary to a Saxon noble family in exile. In 1057, she and her family were able to return to England, but they were forced to move to Scotland following William the Conqueror’s invasion in 1066. A few years later, the princess Margaret married Malcolm Canmore, King of the Scots, in Dunfermline.

Queen Margaret was married to Malcolm for almost twenty-five years; her death followed his by only a few days. She bore six sons and two daughters. Three sons ruled as kings of Scotland—Edgar, Alexander I, and David I (later saint)—while a daughter, Matilda, became the queen of Henry I of England.

Margaret, an inspirational monarch of great Christian devotion, undertook many works of charity. She protected orphans, provided for the poor, visited prisoners in her husband’s dungeons, cleansed the sores of lepers, and washed the feet of beggars. She encouraged and enabled the founding of monasteries, churches, and hostels. Her excellent education served Scotland well, for under her influence the Scottish court became known as a place of culture and learning.

An advocate of church reform, Margaret supported revival of observances that had lapsed into disuse, including Lenten fasts, Easter communion, and refraining from work on Sundays. She also had Iona re-built following its destruction by Viking raiders.

Queen Margaret frequently retired to a secluded cave on the banks of a stream near the royal residence for private prayer and mediation. A (possibly apocryphal) story has it that King Malcolm began to imagine his wife was seeing a lover. Full of suspicion one day, he followed her to the cave, only to overhear her praying for his safety.

Located near the bottom of a small ravine, the site known as St Margaret’s Cave has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries. It was threatened with destruction in 1962 when the Dunfermline Town Council proposed to bury the stream and fill in the ravine in order to build a car park. After a public outcry, the cave was preserved and is now located 84 steps underground from the adjacent parking lot.

Click here to read more about Queen Margaret and Dunfermline, Scotland.

Artwork: William Hole, The Landing of St Margaret at Queensferry, 1899. Oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity

“Whose is this image?”

In the contemporary culture of illusions, questions about image are everything. Whether it is ‘American Idol’ or ‘Canadian Idol’ or ‘So you think you can dance, Canada?’, so much turns on our image of ourselves and our sense of how we would like others to see us. In so many ways, it is a dangerous illusion. The dangers are the narcissistic ‘look-at-me-looking-at-you-looking-at-me’ and the soullessness of it all. What is missing, paradoxically, is the very thing for which we are seeking. We are seeking, I think, for some sense of meaning and purpose, some sense of identity and dignity. Our readings this morning speak wonderfully and directly to those deep and underlying desires.

“Our citizenship is in heaven”, Paul tells us. And Jesus asks those who would entrap him, “Whose is this image and superscription?” His question is really about us and recalls us to the deep and wonderful scriptural teaching that to understand our humanity is to understand that we are made in the image of God. For Christians, that image of God has been further intensified in Jesus Christ. He is the express image of the Father, and he is both God and man. And only so, can Paul claim that “our citizenship is in heaven.”

But what does that mean? The Church is always in one way or another counter-culture. Nowhere is that more clear than in these readings which speak directly and as a counter challenge to the dominant aspects of our culture which can no longer really be said to be a Christian culture in any meaningful sense. What defines us? Will it be our social and political convictions, illusions and commitments? Or will it be something spiritual and intellectual, something theological? In a way, it is as simple as that.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 16-22 November

Tuesday, November 17th
3:30pm Holy Communion – Windsor Elms
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Thursday, November 19th
1:30-3:00pm Seniors’ Drop-In
1:30pm Service of Prayers & Praises at Windsor Elms

Saturday, November 21st
4:30-6:00pm Parish Hall: Annual Parish Ham Supper

Sunday, November 22nd, Sunday Next Before Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Morning Prayer
2:00 pm AMD Service of the Deaf
4:30pm Evening Prayer at KES

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-Third Sunday After Trinity

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

O GOD, our refuge and strength, who art the author of all godliness: Be ready, we beseech thee, to hear the devout prayers of thy Church; and grant that those things which we ask faithfully we may obtain effectually; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 3:17-21
The Gospel: St Matthew 22:15-22

Rubens, Tribute Money

Artwork: Piers Paul Rubens, The Tribute Money, c. 1612.  Oil on panel, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

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Prayers and liturgy

Charles Simeon

The collect for today, the commemoration of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), Priest, Evangelical Divine (source):

Charles SimeonO eternal God,
who didst raise up Charles Simeon
to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
and inspire thy people in service and mission:
grant that we, with all thy Church, may worship the Saviour,
turn away in true repentance from our sins
and walk in the way of holiness;
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: Romans 10:8b-17
The Gospel: St John 21:15-19

Charles Simeon served as vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1782 until his death. His zealous evangelical preaching was bitterly opposed by parish leaders, but proved immensely popular and influential among Cambridge undergraduates. He supported the British and Foreign Bible Society and helped to found the Church Missionary Society. His curate Henry Martyn became chaplain of the East India Company and one of India’s best-known missionaries.

Historian Lord Macaulay wrote of him, “If you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.”

A meditation on the life of Charles Simeon, by John Piper, is posted here.

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Sermons

A Remembrance Day Meditation

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends”

The significance of this day should not be lost on any of us. To remember is to be aware about who we really are. That means, paradoxically, to pay attention to others. It is especially hard in the attention deficit culture. Memory is increasingly the lost and neglected faculty of our humanity.

Remembrance Day is a kind of secular All Souls’ Day. The intention of All Souls’ is to remember our common mortality, to commemorate all who have died and to do so within the greater context of All Saints’, the celebration of our common vocation to holiness. The intention of Remembrance Day in the secular aspect of our culture is to remember those who died for the sake of our political freedoms and civic life.

To say that Remembrance Day is a kind of secular All Souls’ Day is not to say that our remembrance is not religious. It is, and profoundly so. It reminds us of the spiritual and, specifically, Christian principles which underlie the modern national states even in their contemporary confusion and disarray. To remember the fallen is to honour what they fought and died for in far away places and in scenes of absolute horror far beyond our imaging, despite the efforts of the film industry and even the purple prose of preachers.

We remind ourselves of the hell of war and of the destruction and evil which we inflict upon one another. The dust of our common humanity is soaked in blood. But if, and ‘if’ is the big, little word here, if we can remember in a spirit of forgiveness, so much the better. For then our remembering will be joined all the more surely to God’s forgiving remembrance of all our follies, all our sufferings and all our griefs. We will be remembering them in the greater sacrifice of Christ for the whole world, a remembering that enters into all that we do at the Altar.

What we are remembering are the sacrifices for the rational freedoms of our political and social life, to be sure. But what underlies that remembrance is something profoundly spiritual. It is, perhaps, best captured in the scriptural phrase which adorns a thousand cenotaph in a thousand villages throughout the world. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

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Prayers and liturgy

Remembrance Day Prayer

A prayer of The Very Rev Eric Milner-White (1884-1963), Dean of York:

Lest We ForgetO Lord our God, whose name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: We give thee high praise and hearty thanks for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; beseeching thee to give them a part and a lot in those good things which thou has prepared for all those whose names are written in the Book of Life; and grant to us, that having them always in remembrance, we may imitate their faithfulness and with them inherit the new name which thou has promised to them that overcome; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Source: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Martin of Tours

The collect for today, the Feast Day of St. Martin (c 316-397), Monk, Bishop of Tours (source):

Almighty God,
who didst call Martin from the armies of this world
to be a faithful soldier of Christ:
give us grace to follow him
in his love and compassion for those in need,
and empower thy Church to claim for all people
their inheritance as the children of God;
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.
Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 58:6-12
The Gospel: St Matthew 25:34-40

El Greco, St Martin and the BeggarOne of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, Martin was born to pagan parents and, although intending to become a Christian, followed his father into the Roman army. About three years later, in Amiens, France, came the famous incident portrayed in the El Greco painting seen here.

On a cold winter day, he met a beggar at the city gates. Drawing his sword, he cut his military cloak in two and gave half to the man. In a dream that night, he saw Christ wearing the half-cloak he had given away and saying, “Martin, yet a catechumen, has covered me with his garment”. Martin was baptised shortly thereafter.

After being discharged from the army, he met St Hilary at Poitiers upon the latter’s return from exile in 360. Hilary provided a piece of land where Martin founded the first monastic community in Gaul. He lived there for ten years until 371, when he reluctantly accepted a call from the people of Tours to become their bishop.

During his episcopate, Martin gained a reputation as a healer and an apologist against a Gnostic sect known as the Priscillianists. In 386, Priscillian was accused of sorcery, a capital offence, at the emperor’s court. Martin protested the death sentence, arguing that religious differences should not be punished by the emperor but left to the church to deal with. His stand was very unpopular and failed to prevent the execution of Priscillian, the first execution for heresy.

He died on 8 November 397 and was buried three days later at Tours. A great basilica built later at the site was destroyed during the French Revolution. His relics now rest in a replacement church. Thousands of churches in France, England, and elsewhere in Western Europe are dedicated to him.

Artwork: El Greco, St Martin and the Beggar, 1597-1599. Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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