Year: 2013

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 6 – 12 May

Monday, May 6th, Rogation Monday
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, May 7th, Rogation Tuesday
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion

Thursday, May 9th, Ascension Day
3:15pm Service at WIndsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Saturday, May 11th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Lobster Supper

Sunday, May 12th, Sunday After Ascension Day
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Morning Prayer
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Sunday, May 26th, Trinity Sunday
4:00pm Choral Evensong

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fifth Sunday After Easter

The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday After Easter, commonly called Rogation Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:22-27
The Gospel: St. John 16:23-33

Allori, Last SupperArtwork: Alessandro Allori, Last Supper, 1584. Oil on canvas, Museum of the Basilica (formerly Refectory of the Convent), Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

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Prayers and liturgy

Monnica, Matron

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Monnica (c. 331-387), mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo (source):

O faithful God,
who didst strengthen Monica, the mother of Augustine,
with wisdom,
and by her steadfast endurance
didst draw him to seek after thee:
grant us to be constant in prayer
that those who stray from thee may be brought to faith
in 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 Lesson: 1 Samuel 1:10-11,20
The Gospel: St. Luke 7:11-17
Artwork: Benozzo Gozzoli, Monica’s Death, Scenes from the Life of St Augustine, 1463-5. Fresco, Chiesa di Sant’Agostino, San Gimignano.

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Prayers and liturgy

Athanasius, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Athanasius (c. 293-373), Bishop of Alexandria, Theologian, Apologist, Doctor of the Church (source):

St. Athanasius, Mar Musa FrescoEver-living God,
whose servant Athanasius bore witness
to the mystery of the Word made flesh for our salvation:
give us grace, with all thy saints,
to contend for the truth
and to grow into the likeness of 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 Corinthians 4:5-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:23-28

Saint Athanasius is one of the most inspirational figures of the early church. His dogged and uncompromising defence of the full divinity of Jesus Christ against the Arian heresy saved the unity and integrity of the Christian religion and church. He saw that Christ’s deity was foundational to the faith and that Arianism meant the end of Christianity.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Philip and St. James

“Ye believe in God, believe also in me”

The gospel passage for this saints’ day commemoration is part of Jesus’ so-called “farewell discourse” in John’s Gospel from which we have been reading on the last three Sundays of Eastertide. It presents one of the most provocative, most challenging and most controversial, perhaps, of Jesus’ so-called “I am” sayings in John’s Gospel, at least with respect to interfaith dialogue. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

The month of May is ushered in on the steps of the holy apostles, Saint Philip and Saint James, so that “we may steadfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life,” as the Collect puts it.

The readings for The Feast of St. Philip and St. James complement the themes of Eastertide. The fundamental orientation of the Son to the Father is ever so strongly and rather provocatively expressed in the gospel reading, “no man cometh unto the Father but by me,” Jesus says, pointing out to Philip, too, that “he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” And yet, Jesus says, “believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very work’s sake.”

The things which Jesus does are the works which manifest the truth and the life and the way of God. And how are we to participate in that? Through prayer. “If ye ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” All prayer is about nothing less and nothing more than asking the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Spirit. All prayer gathers us into the fundamental orientation of the Son, “because I go unto my Father.” Here again, and providentially, we have the recurring Easter refrain, “because I go to the Father.” Everything is rooted and grounded in the life of God, the holy and blessed Trinity.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Philip and St. James the Apostles

The Collect for today, The Feast of Saint Philip and Saint James the Apostles, with Saint James the Brother of the Lord, Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life; that, following the steps of thy holy Apostles, Saint Philip and Saint James, we may stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Additional Collect, of the Brethren of the Lord:

O HEAVENLY Father, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: We bless thy holy Name for the witness of James and Jude, the kinsmen of the Lord, and pray that we may be made true members of thy heavenly family; through him who willed to be the firstborn among many brethren, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 14:1-14

Artwork:
(left) Giuseppe Mazzuoli, Saint Philip, c. 1718. Marble, Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. Photograph taken by admin, 29 April 2010.
(right) Angelo de’ Rossi, Saint James the Less, 1700-08. Marble, Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. Photograph taken by admin, 29 April 2010.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter, 2:00pm service for Atlantic Ministry of the Deaf

“The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.”

It is a powerful and familiar image. It speaks to us about care, of course, but it does so in the deeper context of sacrifice. It is about something more, though not less, than hugs and squeezes, far more, though not less, perhaps, than the comforts of pharmacare as wonderful as those can be.

We forget that this image so popular and familiar belongs to the pattern of death and resurrection and the way that pattern informs our lives of sacrifice and service. For centuries upon centuries the Gospel of Christ the Good Shepherd has been read in the Easter Season. Christ, the only Son of God, has been given to us as “both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life.” These are powerful and profound theological concepts that relate to the quality of our lives in faith. There is something quite suggestive, important and necessary about connecting the image of the Good Shepherd to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There is the strong theological idea that God can make something good even out of our evil and the philosophical idea that attends it, namely, that the power of the good is always greater than all and any evil.

We forget, I think, that Christ the Good Shepherd is also the Lamb of God. We forget that the care of the Good Shepherd has cure in it, the cure of the radical dis-ease of our souls because we are so wrapped up in ourselves that we no longer know how to live beyond ourselves and for one another. We can’t on the strength of our own power. We can only through the power of Christ living within us. But that means precisely dying to ourselves and living for God and for one another, the very thing that God shows us as belonging to his very nature.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter

“Now I go my way to him that sent me”

The contrasts between sin and grace, between heaven and earth, and between God and man are essential features of religious philosophy. They are always before us in the liturgy or worship of the Church and in the Scripture readings. How to think about these contrasts is a critical task of our lives in faith.

The Eucharistic readings of Eastertide present these contrasts in very powerful ways. We are being challenged to think through them in order to grasp the wonder of Christ’s Resurrection and its meaning for us in our lives. The Gospel readings for the last three Sundays of Eastertide are all taken from the so-called ‘farewell discourse’ of Jesus in John’s Gospel. Jesus is preparing the disciples for his going from us into the darkness of the death of his crucifixion, on the one hand, and into the glory of his eternal life with the Father, on the other hand. We may find the first easier to understand but I suspect we are equally challenged about both.

Jesus seems to know about what is going to happen to him and this, perhaps, perplexes us. And yet, John, especially, is always drawing our attention to the theological idea of the Incarnation, the union of God and man in Jesus Christ, as the essential tenet upon which the whole story stands or falls. The crucifixion cannot be simply an accident either from the standpoint of our humanity or from the divine standpoint. That would render it entirely meaningless and miss the outstanding theological point of the Resurrection. God is able to make something good out of our evil. Nowhere do we see the potentialities for human evil more graphically and more completely than in the Crucifixion of Christ. The whole packet of human sin, past, present and future is already comprehended in the arms of the Crucified Christ. That is why images of the Crucifixion remain such a fundamental feature of Christian art and architecture.

One of the features of the liturgical revolution, especially for Anglicans, has been to downplay this essential idea, but the ideology of progressive liberalism is bankrupt and, in one way or another, we all know this, though we don’t want to face it. We live in a “disordered world” precisely because of our attachment to the themes of material prosperity, scientific naturalism and technological progress; all of which assumptions need, at the very least, to be qualified and critically examined. The idea of a disordered world, of course, is not new – which is a good thing. Why? Because the readings that are before us today, and which have been part of the life of the Church for centuries, provide us with a way to think about our own disorders and distresses by recalling us to God’s story in Jesus Christ.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 29 April – 5 May

Monday, April 29th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, April 30th, Eve of SS. Philip & James
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion

Thursday, May 2nd
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, May 5th, Fifth Sunday after Easter / Rogation Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion (followed by Men’s Club Breakfast)
10:30am Morning Prayer
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church
4:30pm Holy Communion – KES

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, May 11th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Lobster Supper ($25 per ticket)

Sunday, May 26th, Trinity Sunday
4:00pm Choral Evensong

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday After Easter

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

O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:17-21
The Gospel: St. John 16:5-15

Giusto, Last SupperArtwork: Giusto de’Menabuoi, The Last Supper, 1376-78. Fresco, Baptistery, Padua. Photograph taken by admin, 6 May 2010.

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