Christ Church

“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”

St. Peter and St. Paul are the twin pillars of the Christian Church. Outstanding figures in the New Testament, their ministry and life are rather more amply set before us than many other New Testament figures. They require our consideration.

Peter is traditionally seen as the presiding authority at the Council of Jerusalem which legitimates the apostolic mission of Paul who will become the Apostle to the Gentiles. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles provides the conciliar decision in the form of a letter, the first ecclesiastical decree we might say, directed to the missions among the non-Jewish or gentile communities. Its claim is that “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.” A most remarkable and potent statement. It does not mean that what seems good to us is what is simply and absolutely good to the Holy Spirit; such has been the problem of many a church gathering, especially in our own confused and troubled times. But it does suggest the nature of our participation and engagement with God; particularly, our thinking upon what God has made known to us. And yet the specified “necessary things” must give us pause. They are to “abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.” What does that have to do with us?

These are moral directives that speak to the both the Hebraic world in its adamant and strong prohibition against idolatry and to the Hellenistic world of the great variety of pagan cults; they also include matters of sexual immorality. Both idolatry and immorality deny the absolute truth of God. That truth, now manifest in the humanity of Jesus Christ, suggests a further moral imperative, namely, a new sense of moral freedom and responsibility, and, most importantly, a call to holiness of life. What underlies these “necessary things” is the recognition that God’s will revealed through the law and the prophets of Israel now has its realization in the Lord Jesus Christ. What is of interest is that both Peter and Paul are present at this Council. It is the only time in the Scriptures that we see them together.

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

O LORD, who never failest to help and govern them whom thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love: Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 3:13-24
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:15-24

Artwork: Cicely Mary Barker, The Parable of the Great Supper, 1935. Oil on canvas, Lady Chapel, St. George’s, Waddon (near Croydon).

The collects for today, the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul the Apostles, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O almighty God, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst give to thy Apostle Saint Peter many excellent gifts, and commandedst him earnestly to feed thy flock: Make, we beseech thee, all Bishops and Pastors diligently to preach thy holy Word, and the people obediently to follow the same, that they may receive the crown of everlasting glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God, who, through the preaching of the blessed Apostle Saint Paul, hast caused the light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world: Grant, we beseech thee, that we, having his manifold labours in remembrance, may show forth our thankfulness unto thee for the same, by following the holy doctrine which he taught; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 1:1-9
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:13-19

Artwork: St. Peter and St. Paul (detail from the Queen Victoria Window), 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 1903. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Irenaeus (d. 202), Bishop of Lyon, Doctor of the Church (source):

O God of peace,
who through the ministry of thy servant Irenæus
didst strengthen the true faith and bring harmony to thy Church:
keep us steadfast in thy true religion
and renew us in faith and love,
that we may ever walk in the way
that leadeth to everlasting life;
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: 2 Timothy 2:22b-26
The Gospel: St. Luke 11:33-36

Artwork: Pierrot Feré, Baptism of Saint Irenaeus (detail of the Saint Piat Tapestry), 1402. Treasury of the Cathedral, Tournai.

Sunday, July 6th, Third Sunday after Trinity/Octave of St. Peter & St. Paul
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
9:00am Holy Communion – St. Thomas’, Three Mile Plains
10:30am Holy Communion – Christ Church

Sunday, July 13th, Fourth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
9:00am Holy Communion – St. Michael’s, Windsor Forks
10:30am Holy Communion – Christ Church

Sunday, July 20th, Fifth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
9:00am Service at KES Chapel
10:30am Holy Communion – Christ Church
7:00pm Evening Prayer – All Saints’, Leminster

Sunday, July 27th, Sixth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
9:00am Holy Communion – St. George’s, Falmouth
10:30am Holy Communion – Christ Church

Sunday, August 3rd, Seventh Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
10:30am Holy Communion – Christ Church

Sunday, August 10th, Eighth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
7:00pm Evening Prayer – All Saints’, Leminster

Sunday, August 17th, Ninth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
10:30am Holy Communion – Christ Church

Sunday, August 24th, Tenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
10:30am Holy Communion – Christ Church

Sunday, August 31th, Eleventh Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
10:30am Holy Communion – Christ Church

(Fr. David Curry is Priest-in-Charge of the Parish of Avon Valley during July;
Fr. Tom Henderson is Priest-in-Charge of the Parish of Christ Church during August)

The collect for today, the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, by whose providence thy servant John Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of thy Son our Saviour, by preaching of repentance: Make us so to follow his doctrine and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching, and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 40:1-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:57-80

Artwork: Jacopo Pontormo, Birth of John the Baptist, 1526. Oil on panel, Uffizi, Florence.

“Love is of God”

The Trinity celebrates the fullness of God’s Revelation. It gathers up the whole pageant of what God has revealed of himself to us into the proclamation of God’s own self-identity. God is Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, the three-in-one and the one-in-three. “The Father is God, the Son God, the Holy Ghost God; And yet there are not three Gods, but one God” (Athanasian Creed, BCP, p. 696). Such is the mystery of God. It is the essential heart of the Christian faith. The mystery lies in what has been shown to us.

It is all the vision of God. It is all God teaching us and all our thinking upon what God has taught us; “let [us] thus think of the Trinity” (Athanasian Creed). “I saw the Lord,” says Isaiah, recounting his vision of God, “in the year that King Uzziah died” (Isaiah 6.1).  “I saw and behold, a door was opened in heaven,” says St. John in his Revelation, his recounting of what had been shown to him to proclaim to us (Rev. 4.1). “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen,” says Jesus to Nicodemus, for so are we taught of “heavenly things” (John 3.11,12).

He is the teacher and not simply a teacher “come from God” like Moses and the Prophets, as Nicodemus supposes. For “these signs that thou doest” are not done simply because “God is with him”.  And what about those Old Testament books of ancient war stories and political intrigue?  What are we to learn from them? We are to learn of God’s good providence made known through the events of nations and the actions of persons, however contrary to worldly expectations and however hidden to ordinary perceptions. Israel had to learn what it means to be God’s people.  Israel had to learn what it means to live under the word and in the will of the God who had made himself known to her. Israel had to learn what it means to be brought up in the steadfast fear and love of God.  And so do we.

Obedience to God’s Word has to be learned. It is the condition of our being in the kingdom of God. It means attending to God’s Word, hearing it with the intention of acting upon what we hear.

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“Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind.”

Dreams and visions. It is hard to know what to make of such things. They might seem so subjective and impressionistic, so removed from what is actual and real, as we might assume. In one way, that is true, at least when we look at the form in which ideas are conveyed rather than the ideas themselves. But if we look instead at the ideas themselves then perhaps, just perhaps, even in our dogmatic and empirical attachments to material reality, we might discover wisdom and truth.

And wisdom and truth are what are at issue on The First Sunday after Trinity. Wisdom and truth guides and directs our judgments and our actions. The Eucharistic readings, the epistle from The First letter of John that “love is of God” and Luke’s Gospel about the parable of the rich man, Dives, and Lazarus, are all about living the vision that has been opened out to us. “Behold, a door was opened in heaven,” as we heard on Trinity Sunday.

The point of an open door is that you go through it. The vision is to be entered into and lived. Our failure to do so creates the “great gulf fixed” between the rich man in the torments of Hell and Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. Hell, as always, is about our own choosing; signaled in the parable by stepping over and ignoring Lazarus “lying at his gate full of sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table”; only the dogs attend to Lazarus, it seems. It is quite a powerful image and one which conveys great wisdom as parables so often do.

Like dreams and visions, the parable opens us out to a larger understanding of reality. In ignoring Lazarus, the parable suggest, we are blind to the things of God which have been opened out to us. The door “opened in heaven” is about what is revealed and made known to us. We neglect such things at our peril. The further paradox is that in neglecting the things of God and heaven we wreak havoc on our lives with one another. We cut ourselves off from the only reality that there is. The dreams and visions are what are truly real.

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Monday, June 23rd
6-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, June 24th, Nativity of St. John the Baptist
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion

Wednesday, June 25th
2:00pm Funeral of Eileen Demone (Demont’s Funeral Home)

Thursday, June 26th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Friday, June 27th
3:30pm Holy Communion – Gladys Manning Home

Saturday, June 28th
4:30pm Holy Matrimony: Melanie Dawn Riley & Harry Brett Dill

Sunday, June 29th, St. Peter & St. Paul / Trinity II
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer

The collect for today, the Second Sunday after Pentecost, commonly called The First Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers; and because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 4:7-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:19-31

Artwork: Workshop of Domenico Feti, The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, 1618-28. Oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington.