Month: June 2011

Prayers and liturgy

Sunday After Ascension Day

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

O GOD the King of Glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St Peter 4:7-11
The Gospel: St John 15:26-16:4a

SantApollinare Nuovo, Last Supper

Artwork: The Last Supper, 6th-century mosaic, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna. This is the oldest known representation of the Last Supper.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension

“He ascended into heaven”

A creedal teaching, the Ascension of Christ is one of the most overlooked feasts in the life of the Christian Church. Its meaning, however, is quite radical. In a way, it brings to a kind of completion the radical meaning of Christ’s resurrection.

Death and resurrection constitute the fundamental pattern of Christian life but without the Ascension to say that is to say very little. What the Ascension reminds us is our home with God. The Ascension of Christ is about the homecoming of the Son to the Father which establishes our homeland of the spirit. The Fathers of the early Church grasped this point ever so strongly. The Ascension, as Leo the Great puts it, is “the exaltation of our humanity.” In Christ’s Ascension, the heaven of God becomes our homeland.

The Ascension marks the culmination of the Easter Season. It inaugurates a new spiritual outlook, but one which forever remains grounded in the pattern of death and resurrection. We have an end with God and that homeland of the spirit is something which we participate in now through prayer and praise and through the sacraments.

We ascend in the Ascension of Christ. Somehow we are caught up into that heavenly motion. How? Through prayer, the very thing that has brought us to the Ascension of Christ. “We ascend in the ascension of our hearts,“ as Augustine remarks. The Ascension signals the purpose and meaning of Christ’s being with us. Nothing need stand between us and God except the barriers which we create ourselves. Prayer as the lifting up of our hearts places us in the divine will for our humanity and world. He has the whole world in his hands; never more so than at the Ascension when the Son returns to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world.

It is in prayer and praise that participate in that work of cosmic redemption and are gathered into the heavenly community. We ascend in the Ascension of Christ.

“He ascended into heaven”

Fr. David Curry
Ascension 2011

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Prayers and liturgy

The Ascension Day

The collect for today, The Ascension Day, being the fortieth day after Easter, sometimes called Holy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continuously dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-11
The Gospel: St Mark 16:14-20

Berlinghieri, Ascension

Artwork: Berlinghiero Berlinghieri, Ascension: Christ with angels and apostles, 13th century mosaic, Facade, Basilica di San Frediano, Lucca. Photograph taken by admin, 22 May 2010.

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Prayers and liturgy

Justin Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of Justin (c. 100 – 165), Philosopher, Apologist, Martyr at Rome (source):

St. Justin MartyrO God our redeemer,
who through the folly of the cross
didst teach thy martyr Justin
the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ:
free us, we beseech thee, from every kind of error,
that we, like him, may be firmly grounded in the faith,
and make thy name known to all peoples;
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 Corinthians 1:18-30
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:1-8

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