Christ Church

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Andrew, Apostle and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who didst give such grace unto thy holy Apostle Saint Andrew, that he readily obeyed the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him without delay: Grant unto us all, that we, being called by thy holy word, may forthwith give up ourselves obediently to fulfil thy holy commandments; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 10:8-18
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:18-22

Click here to read more about Saint Andrew.

Artwork: Mattia Preti, Crucifixion of St Andrew, 1650-51. Oil on canvas, Sant’Andrea della Valle, Rome. Photograph taken by admin, 28 April 2010.

Saint Andrew is believed to have been crucified on a saltire (X-shaped) cross in Patras, Greece. Around 357, Roman emperor Constantine had his remains transferred to the Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople. During the Fourth Crusade, Cardinal Pietro Capuano (Peter of Capua) took the saint’s remains to Amalfi. The relics arrived on 8 May 1208 to joyful celebration and were placed in the crypt of the Cathedral of St Andrew.

Artwork: Reliquary of Saint Andrew, 17th century, tooled silver, St Andrew’s Cathedral, Amalfi. Photograph taken by admin, 3 June 2010.

“Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on
the armour of light”

Advent signals the coming of God towards us. But what is our response? Are we watching and waiting? Are we aware of humanity’s need for the coming of the one who alone can redeem? Are we looking for something more beyond the dull, dark empty loneliness of our anxious and troubled lives? In short, are we prepared for the Advent of Christ to us? That is the challenge of the readings on this day.

So often we think of Advent as simply the season of preparation for Christmas. To be sure, it is, but it is also something more. It is a season and a doctrine which has a real meaning and significance in and of itself. For Advent is the coming. Are we prepared for it or not? The coming is about the challenging presence of God. There is the constant coming of God’s Word to us in proclamation and celebration.

In the great gospel for this day, Christ comes to Jerusalem. He enters the city triumphantly. It is a royal procession. The King has come to his own city. All is light and grace and glory, it seems. “Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest,” “the multitudes that went before, and that followed” cry, both those who went before, them, and those that followed, us. But will we not shortly hear at Christmas that “he came unto his own and his own received him not”? The whole city was moved to say in wondering ignorance and in perplexity, “Who is this?” We know the story. The King – God’s own Word and Son – will be rejected. All that is light and life ends in darkness and death, it seems; the darkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the darkness of the cross and the grave.

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Tuesday, November 30th, St. Andrew
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies/Sparks Mtg.- Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Thursday, December 2nd
1:30-3:00pm Seniors’ Drop-In
7:30pm West Hants Historical Society

Sunday, December 5th, Second Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion (followed by Men’s Club breakfast)
9:30am Holy Communion at KES
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30pm Evening Prayer at Christ Church

“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good life,
let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom”

Times of transition signal occasions for renewal. We come to the ending of the Church Year and so to the beginning of yet another. The times of endings return us to our beginnings. Advent marks a new beginning.

But what does it mean, these endings which bring us back to our beginnings? What does it mean to begin again? Are we simply trapped in a never-ending cycle, like squirrels on an endless fly-wheel? Is the cycle of the Church Year another dreary round of the same old things in the same old places with the same old faces? Or is it the dance of God’s grace and glory in human lives?

We come to the end of a year of grace and take stock of our lives in the light of God’s grace. It marks a kind of harvest-time for our souls, as it were, a gathering up of the fruits of the past year’s grace in our lives. But it means too, that we are returned to our beginning, to Him who is the foundation and meaning of our lives. The grace is God’s Word revealed.

’In the greyness of the year, comes Christ the King’ (with apologies to T.S. Eliot). Christ strides across the barren fields of humanity to gather us into the barn of his righteousness and truth. We are returned to him who is “the Lord our Righteousness,” our Judge and King, the Shepherd and the Healer of all mankind, the Alpha and the Omega of all creation. Our endings and our beginnings all meet in him. Basil the Great shows us something of what this means:

As all the fruits of the season come to us in their proper time, flowers in spring, corn in summer and apples in autumn, so the fruit for winter is talk.

Talk, you may protest, thank you very much, but we have had enough talk, too much talk in fact, especially, no doubt, preachers’ talk! But talk about what, you might ask? What is the talk in the times of endings, the fruit for winter’s evenings, the talk which marks the occasions for renewed beginnings?

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The Blessing of the Advent Wreath

Father: Our Help is in the Name of the Lord.
(or Head of Household)

Family: Who has made Heaven and Earth.

Father: Let us pray:

O God, by whose Word all things are sanctified, pour forth your blessing upon this wreath, and grant that we who use it may prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ and may receive from you the abundant graces of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Family: Amen

Then follows the next prayer, which is also said throughout the first week before the evening meal, beginning with Sunday Evening.

The Week of the First Sunday in Advent

Father: Let us pray:

O Lord, stir up your power and come, that by the protection of your grace we may be rescued from the threatening dangers of our sins and be saved by your deliverance; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Family: Amen

One Candle is lit and left burning during the evening meal each night of this week.

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The collect for today, the First Sunday in Advent, being the Fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 13:8-14
The Gospel: St Matthew 21:1-13

Artwork: Entrance Into Jerusalem, Pala d’Oro (upper part), St Mark’s Basilica, Venice.

The Pala d’Oro (literally, “golden cloth”) is the altarpiece of St Mark’s Basilica, Venice, made of cloisonné enamels on gold leaf (Byzantine, 10th-12th centuries) in a gilded silver frame encrusted with pearls and precious stones (Venetian, 14th century).

The lower two-thirds of the altarpiece was commissioned by Venice from Byzantine craftsmen in the early 12th century. The upper third was looted from the Pantokrator Monastery, Constantinople, and brought to Venice after the Fourth Crusade of 1204.

The Pala d’Oro assumed its present form in 1345 when doge Andrea Dandolo commissioned Giambattista Bonesegna to make the Gothic frame of gilded silver, studded with almost two thousand precious and semi-precious stones, to contain the two parts.

The collect for a virgin or matron, on the Feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (4th century?), Virgin and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD Most High, the creator of all mankind, we bless thy holy Name for the virtue and grace which thou hast given unto holy women in all ages, especially thy servant Catherine; and we pray that the example of her faith and purity, and courage unto death, may inspire many souls in this generation to look unto thee, and to follow thy blessed Son Jesus Christ our Saviour; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 9:36-42
The Gospel: St Luke 10:38-42

Click here to read more about Saint Catherine.

Artwork: Altichiero da Zevio, The Beheading of Saint Catherine, c. 1377. Fresco, St George’s Oratory, Padua.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Clement (c. 30-c. 100), Bishop of Rome, Martyr (source):

Eternal Father, creator of all,
whose martyr Clement bore witness with his blood
to the love that he proclaimed and the gospel that he preached:
give us thankful hearts as we celebrate thy faithfulness,
revealed to us in the lives of thy saints,
and strengthen us in our pilgrimage as we follow 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 Epistle: 2 Timothy 2:1-7
The Gospel: St Luke 6:37-45

Click here to read more about Saint Clement.

Artwork: Saint Clement, stained glass, St Olave’s Church, Hart Street, London. Photo taken by admin, 24 August 2004.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cecilia (3rd century), Virgin, Martyr (source):

O GOD, which makest us glad with the yearly festival of blessed Cecilia thy Virgin and Martyr: grant, we beseech thee; that as we do venerate her in our outward office, so we may follow the example of her godly conversation. Through Jesus Christ our Lord who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Ecclesiasticus 51:9-12
The Gospel: St Matthew 25:1-13

Artwork: Stefano Maderno, The Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, 1601. Marble, Saint Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome.

“Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; / Show the light
of thy countenance, and we shall be whole”

It is, to my mind, a most intriguing scene. It belongs to the beginning of John’s Gospel and yet we read it at the very end of the Christian year. It is the first scene in his Gospel in which Jesus speaks directly. Quite apart from the miracle of John’s Prologue, which speaks to us from the eternal heights of heaven, as it were, and which we will hear at Christmas, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”, this is the first scene in which Jesus comes out of the background and into the foreground of the Scriptures. But has he been in the foreground of our lives in this past year of grace?

The prophetic finger of John the Baptist points to Jesus directly. “Behold the Lamb of God,” he says, twice actually. The first time is just before our gospel reading here. It is followed by the Baptist’s profound reflection upon the meaning of the one whom he sees and whom he has pointed out. He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” something we hear and pray repeatedly in our liturgy. The second time is followed by Jesus stepping out into the centre which he is and around which everything turns. John points him out to us again with the words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” In some sense the ministry of John the Baptist is already fulfilled even as it seems it has only begun. As he says in a related passage, Christ “must increase but I must decrease”(Jn.3.30) He gives place to him who is “the Alpha and the Omega” of our lives and who must have his increase in us.

The witness of John the Baptist is all the more remarkable because it points to the Revelation of God in our very midst. As he says, “I myself did not know him; but for this I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel”(Jn.1.31). And again, “I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (Jn.1.33).

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