Month: October 2013

Prayers and liturgy

Paulinus, Missionary and Archbishop

Saint PaulinusThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Paulinus (c. 584-644), Monk, first Archbishop of York, Missionary (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you for your servant Paulinus, whom you called to preach the Gospel to the people of northern England. Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

With the Epistle and Gospel for a Bishop or Archbishop, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

The St. Paulinus stained glass was made by the firm of C.E. Kempe of London and installed in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, St John’s, Newfoundland, in 1913. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Denys, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Denys (d. c. 258), Bishop of Paris, Patron Saint of France, Martyr (source):

O GOD, who as on this day didst endow thy blessed Martyr and Bishop Saint Denys with strength to suffer stedfastly for thy sake, and didst join unto him Rusticus and Eleutherius for the preaching of thy glory to the Gentiles: grant us, we beseech thee, so to follow their good example; that for the love of thee we may despise all worldly prosperity, and be afraid of no manner of worldly adversity. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lesson: Acts 17:22-34
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:1-9

Artwork: Boucicaut Master, Saint Denys, early 15th century. Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.

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Prayers and liturgy

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for today, the commemoration of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln, Scholar (source):

Robert GrossetesteO God our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Robert Grosseteste to be a bishop and pastor in thy Church and to feed thy flock: Give to all pastors abundant gifts of thy Holy Spirit, that they may minister in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 20:28-32
The Gospel: St Luke 16:10-15

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Sermons

Meditation for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, 8:00am Morning Prayer

“I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand
at the latter day upon the earth”

They are, perhaps, familiar words, even comforting words. You may recall them from the Prayer Book Burial Office. And yet, it is always a bit disconcerting to discover certain Scriptural passages, familiar to us in the Liturgy, in their actual context such as we have heard this morning from our first lesson from The Book of Job.

We might call it Job’s complaint; a complaint voiced against the Comforters whose advice and counsel disturbs Job greatly. His cry, however, is to the God, who, it seems, does not answer and, yet, in this word, Job insists on the truth of God no matter how things appear. Indeed, the way things appear is always less than the way things truly are, at least in the sight of God. Job understands this over and against our all-too-human tendencies to reduce the mystery of God to our schemes, systems and calculations. That is the great glory of Job. He is only too well aware of the distance between God and man. His cry to God is equally a cry of frustration and criticism of the Comforters who, as he sees it, are beating up on him with far less justification than the God who seems to pursue him and who seems to have touched him with suffering.

And there is the point, almost unthinkable for us, that human suffering could be viewed as coming, in some sense, from the hand of God. Job knows what the Comforters and many of us fail to understand. The older Prayer Book tradition understood this and incorporated it into the Service of the Ministry of the Sick with the strong commendatory words to be said to someone on their death bed: “Know ye this, that this is the visitation of the Lord upon you.” Unheard of and quite unthinkable in our age. We quaver at such words or reject them with angry disdain but there is a great and strange comfort in them. What is it? Simply that our sufferings and our deaths are not apart from the love and care of God for us; that God makes a way to us through the path of suffering and death.

How is this even thinkable? Only through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Only through the passion and death of Christ which makes it possible to see human suffering, as Paul suggests in our second lesson, as participating in the sufferings of Christ for us. This is to push things beyond Job and yet in the very direction that Job points us in this passage. His cry is to God. It is a kind of affirmation of faith and in a wonderfully Jewish way. For it proclaims something about God that implies the necessity of God’s response. “I know,” Job says, and he is saying this against what the Comforters do not know because they have, as we all do, so domesticated and reduced God to our level and concerns as to render God as utterly unthinkable and certainly unbelievable.

We need the wonderful wisdom of Job in his struggle with God to open us out to the deeper meaning of our life in Christ. Job’s cry from the heart opens us out to the mystery of God’s coming to us and entering into the very flesh and fabric of human life. He does so to bring us to himself, to the fulfillment of the insight of Job for each of us, that we “shall see God,” that we shall find the truth and dignity of our humanity in God.

“I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand
at the latter day upon the earth”

Fr. Curry
Meditation, MP
Trinity XIX,
Oct. 6th, 2013

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 7 – 13 October

Tuesday, October 8th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Wednesday, October 9th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Thursday, October 10th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Saturday, October 12th
9:00-10:00am Men’s Club Decorating for Harvest Thanksgiving

Sunday, October 13th, Harvest Thanksgiving/Twentieth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Friday, October 18th
7:30pm Christ Church Concert Series I, Violin(s) & Piano, Nellie & Stan Chen

Friday, November 1st
3:00pm 225th Anniversary Service of the Founding of King’s Collegiate School (now King’s-Edgehill)

Friday, December 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Concert Series II, Capella Regalis presents “To Bethlehem with Kings”

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Prayers and liturgy

The Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity

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

O GOD, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:17-32
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:1-8

Pavlov, Christ Heals ParalyticArtwork: Vladimir Pavlov, Christ Heals the Paralytic, undated (1890s?). Khram Spasa na Krovi (Church of the Saviour on the Spilt Blood), St. Petersburg.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Francis of Assisi

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Friar, Deacon, Founder of the Friars Minor (source):

O God,
who ever delightest to reveal thyself
to the childlike and lowly of heart,
grant that, following the example of the blessed Francis,
we may count the wisdom of this world as foolishness
and know only Jesus Christ and him crucified,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Galatians 6:14-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 11:25-30

Cagnacci, St. Francis in PrayerArtwork: Guido Cagnacci, Saint Francis in Prayer, c. 1610-14. Oil on canvas, Musée des beaux-arts de Marseille.

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Prayers and liturgy

Remigius, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Remigius (c. 438-533), Bishop of Rheims, Apostle to the Franks (source):

O God, who by the teaching of thy faithful servant and bishop Remigius didst turn the nation of the Franks from vain idolatry to the worship of thee, the true and living God, in the fullness of the catholic faith; Grant that we who glory in the name of Christian may show forth our faith in worthy deeds; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. John 14:3-7

Levieux, St. Remegius Cures Blind ManRemigius was consecrated bishop of Rheims at age 22. The pagan Clovis I, who had married the Christian princess Clothilde, began his reign as king of the Franks about 20 years later, in 481.

Before entering combat against German tribes at Tolbiac, Clovis prayed to “Clothilde’s God” for victory. His soldiers won the battle, and Clothilde asked Remigius to teach the king about Christianity. Clovis was amazed by the story of “this unarmed God who was not of the race of Thor or Odin”. In the words of Remigius, the king came “to adore what he had burnt and to burn what he had adored”.

In 496, Remigius baptised Clovis in a public ceremony at Rheims Cathedral. Three thousand Franks also became Christians. Under the king’s protection, Remigius was able to spread the gospel and build churches throughout Gaul.

Artwork: Reynaud Levieux, Saint Remigius Cures the Blind Man, 17th century. Oil on canvas, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.

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