Year: 2013

Prayers and liturgy

Margaret, Queen

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

Hole, Landing of 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.

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Prayers and liturgy

Charles Simeon, Pastor

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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Prayers and liturgy

Martin of Tours

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint 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.

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

Donner, St. MartinOne 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 statue 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.

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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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Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity

“If I may but touch his garment”

It is a very touching scene, if you will pardon the pun! The mise-en-scene or context is actually a scene within a scene. It opens us out to the drama of salvation. But it is a kind of interlude, something which happens in between something else. In this case, a healing happens while Jesus is on his way to raise the daughter of “a certain ruler” who is presumed dead. It happens in a crowd; an event which is at once public and private.

An unnamed woman, desperate and ill, afflicted with a debilitating sickness, an issue of blood twelve years, “came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment.” It is a touching act, quite literally of course, but there is such a gentleness of wisdom in this scene which is quite revealing. We are allowed to know the inner thoughts of the woman in her reaching out to touch Jesus. “For she said within herself, If I may touch his garment, I shall be whole.” And we see his marvelously gentle yet revealing response, “Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Her desire for healing is more than the physical healing of her affliction; it is about wholeness. She seeks to be made whole by reaching out and touching Jesus as if there were something mystical and magical even about his robes, like Prospero’s “magic garment” (The Tempest). A kind of superstition, we might think; certainly an attempt to steal surreptiously a cure from Jesus unawares.

The attribution of special properties to the clothing of special persons is an interesting concept. At the very least, it suggests that she sees something special in Jesus and by extension to anything and everything associated with him such as his clothing. But it is an inaccurate and incomplete, and even dangerous view of God’s dealings with our humanity. It confuses the person with the things. It mistakes the real nature of God’s redemption of our humanity. The touch is real and yet unnecessary. Whether we touch him or not, Jesus can touch and heal us either close at hand or from afar, as we have seen in other Gospel stories.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 11 – 17 November

Monday, November 11th, Remembrance Day
10:00am KES Cenotaph
11:00am Windsor Cenotaph

Tuesday, November 12th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, November 14th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 17th, Trinity XXV
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Morning Prayer
4:00pm Evening Prayer

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, November 19th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks and What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel

Saturday, November 23rd
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Ham Supper

Friday, December 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Concert Series II: Capella Regalis presents “To Bethlehem with Kings” ($10/$5 students)

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Trinity

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

O LORD, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences; that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

The Epistle: Colossians 1:3-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:18-26

Tissot, Woman with Issue of BloodArtwork: James Tissot, The Woman with an Issue of Blood, 1886-96. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, Brooklyn Museum.

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Sermons

Meditation on the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity

“But Jesus turned him about”
A Meditation on the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity

This year the Trinity Season runs to twenty-five Sundays, just one shy of the longest it can be. Its length depends on the date of Easter. Trinity Season and the Epiphany Season push and pull one another accordingly with a variable number of Sundays for each season. If the one is short, the other is long. This year, November 10th, is the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. All this is but preamble to the readings which we have on these last Sundays of Trinity because we don’t always have them every year for the reason just stated.

That brings us to an important consideration, however: the idea of an established pattern of Scripture readings. For some Christian traditions, this is anathema as being too formal and too restrictive. The irony is that if left to ministers or even parochial spiritual committees the range and choice of Scripture readings is often quite constrained and limited. At issue, too, is who chooses and upon what basis? What are the principles that determine the pattern of scripture readings called a lectionary?

One feature of the contemporary church and its confusions is the jettisoning of a very ancient tradition of reading the Scriptures embodied in the Eucharistic lectionary, the readings at Holy Communion. Not only ancient, it was also the most ecumenical lectionary, historically speaking. Developed from the fifth century onwards, it was the pattern of reading common to the Western Church throughout the medieval period and into the modern; post-reformation, mutatis mutandi, it remained the common property of Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Anglicans, for instance. This alone is suggestive and compelling. In jettisoning it, we have been left with a rather confusing array of lectionaries which all bear a common shape – three readings rather than two at Holy Communion, for instance – and which claim a kind of ecumenicity.

Despite the attempt at achieving a Common Lectionary, it hasn’t happened. But there is a further problem, the question of what are the principles that inform the pattern of readings. What are the themes and ideas that determine the choice of passages? For the older ecumenical lectionary (wonderfully present in our 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer, albeit with some changes to be sure), the principles are inescapably creedal. In other words, the pattern of reading relates to the Creeds, to the foundational and formative principles of the Christian Faith.

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Prayers and liturgy

Willibrord, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Willibrord (658-739), Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle to the Frisians, Patron Saint of the Netherlands (source):

Cornelis Bloemaert, Holy WillibrordO Lord our God, who dost call whom thou willest and send them whither thou choosest: We thank thee for sending thy servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve thee, the living God; and we entreat thee to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of thy service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-9
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-9

Artwork: Cornelis Bloemaert, The Holy Willibrord, c. 1630, Copper Engraving.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, Choral Evensong

“Call no man happy before his death”

They are words of ancient wisdom that belong to the Jewish and the Greek and the Roman cultures of antiquity. Respice finem. Look to the end. They challenge our contemporary world, too. There is quite something wonderful and compelling about our readings from the Wisdom Literature of the Jewish Scriptures in tandem with the lesson from Matthew’s Gospel, something made even more wonderful and more compelling when they are seen within the context of the Octave of the Feast of All Saints’. They challenge us about how we understand ourselves.

To look to the end is wonderful wisdom if for no other reason than that it implies that there is an end in the sense of purpose and meaning. Wisdom is altogether about purpose and meaning, the idea that ennobles our humanity. “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” In a way, T.S. Eliot’s questions simply echo the wisdom of Jesu ben Sirach, the ancient wisdom of Jew, Greek and Roman that are taken up and made part of the wisdom of Christians for every age. A world of bits and bytes of random facts and factlets disengaged from any context is information without knowledge. There is no wisdom in the Internet, only contextless information that can perhaps be shaped and formed into the beginnings of knowledge and wisdom. There is no wisdom in the knowledge that is a bare assemblage of facts and figures or of logical argument if there is no meaning.

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