Year: 2014

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 23 – 29 June

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

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday After Trinity

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

Feti Workshop, Lazarus and the Rich ManO 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.

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Prayers and liturgy

Basil the Great, Bishop and Doctor

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Basil the Great (c. 330-79), Bishop of Caesarea, Cappadocian Father, Doctor of the Church (source):

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Basil of Caesarea, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 2:6-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:21-24

Vatican Museums, Five Fathers of the ChurchArtwork: Five Fathers of the Church: Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Cyril, and Gregory the Theologian. Unknown Cretan artist, 17th century, Vatican Museums. Photograph taken by admin, 26 April 2010.

(This commemoration has been transferred from 14 June.)

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Sermons

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, 10:30am Holy Communion

“Behold, a door was opened in heaven”

We have just recited “The Creed of St. Athanasius, commonly so called”! Now that was quite a spiritual and intellectual work-out, wasn’t! Imagine doing that once every month as well as on this day, Trinity Sunday! I don’t imagine many places are using it even on this day. It challenges the anti-intellectualism of our church and culture. And yet, it provides us with a wonderful way to think the mystery of God, the mystery that we can only think and only be constantly thinking; the mystery that we can never ever exhaust. We need this marvelous parade of paradoxes to glimpse and behold the inexhaustible mystery of God.

The Creeds themselves, of which the Athanasian Creed is one, are wonderful distillations of the scriptural witness to the living reality of God revealed and therefore given to be thought. The Athanasian Creed, admittedly awkward for use liturgically and not exactly twitterable, nonetheless provides a wonderful way of thinking and reasoning upon the mystery of God. “Let us thus think of the Trinity,” it says (now that could be tweeted!), means think of the Trinity in this way, the way of affirmation and renunciation of images, positive and negative theology, that catapult us into the spiritual reality of God and in which we discover the deeper truth of our humanity. The mystery of the living reality of God is being opened unto us. Think God, love God and be with God in his being with us!

It was behind closed doors, literally and figuratively, that Jesus made known to us his resurrection. But it is not only behind closed doors that the things of God are made known to us. Through the incarnation and manifestation of Jesus Christ, through his passion and death, through his resurrection and ascension, through the sending of the Holy Spirit, “a door was opened in heaven” and we behold the glory of God in the fullness of his revelation. God makes himself known to us.

Trinity Sunday sets before us the vision of God which is the end of man. “The end of man is endless Godhead endlessly possessed” (Austin Farrer). Trinity Sunday, we might say, is the great Te Deum Laudamus of the Church. We proclaim God as the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We proclaim what we have been given to behold through the fullness of the scriptural witness to God’s revelation. It is what we have been given to proclaim and in which we are privileged to participate.

We meet together in the glory of the revealed God, the glory of the Trinity. All our beginnings and all our endings have their place of meeting in the Trinity. It is, we may say, the one thing essential. No Trinity, no Christianity. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’, except by the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor.12.3). To say “Jesus is Lord” is to make a Trinitarian statement. It is the burden of the Church’s proclamation.

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Sermons

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, 8:00am Holy Communion

“Behold, a door was opened in heaven”

It was behind closed doors, literally and figuratively, that Jesus made known to us his resurrection. But it is not only behind closed doors that the things of God are made known to us. Through the incarnation and manifestation of Jesus Christ, through his passion and death, through his resurrection and ascension, through the sending of the Holy Spirit, “a door was opened in heaven” and we behold the glory of God in the fullness of his revelation. God makes himself known to us.

Trinity Sunday sets before us the vision of God which is the end of man. “The end of man is endless Godhead endlessly possessed” (Austin Farrer). Trinity Sunday, we might say, is the great Te Deum Laudamus of the Church. We proclaim God as the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We proclaim what we have been given to behold through the fullness of the scriptural witness to God’s revelation. It is what we have been given to proclaim and in which we are privileged to participate.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 16 – 22 June

Tuesday, June 17th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, June 19th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Friday, June 20th
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge

Sunday, June 22nd, The First Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Morning Prayer
2:00pm AMD Service of the Deaf

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Prayers and liturgy

Trinity Sunday

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

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: We beseech thee, that this holy faith may evermore be our defence against all adversities; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 4:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 3:1-15

Botticelli, Holy Trinity with SaintsArtwork: Sandro Botticelli, Holy Trinity with Saints, 1491-94. Tempera and oil on panel, Courtauld Gallery, London.

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King's-Edgehill School Sermons, Sermons

Sermon for Encaenia 2014

Fr. David Curry’s Encaenia sermon is posted here with footnotes omitted. Click here to download a pdf version that includes footnotes.

“Take with you words and return to the Lord”

Words? No, Rev, please, no more words! But really, what else is there to take with you from School? To be sure, a plethora of experiences and a myriad of memories. Yet those, too, are carried on the wings of words and may even mean more than the words on a piece of parchment.

Alright, last words. At last, you say. The last day of High School! Hooray! At last, your parents say! Perhaps with great sighs of relief! And for some parents, this is their last graduation day, too! Graduation Day and Ben Mackey’s birthday, to boot! Well, you have all made it! Was there really any doubt? Well, of course. You had to do it and you have done it all!

Today you step up and step out, the graduating class of 2014, the graduating class in the 225th anniversary year of the founding of King’s Collegiate School, now King’s-Edgehill. You are the pride of your parents and grandparents, of your teachers and coaches, of your friends and families, of your Headmaster and Chaplain. In a matter of a few hours you will no longer be High School students but alumni and graduates. It seems that something has finally and at long last come to an end. But in what sense of an end?

This service is called Encaenia, a Greek word (εγκαινια: εν & καινος) that signifies something new and fresh, a kind of beginning, it might seem. It refers to a festival of dedication and a renewal of devotion, and to the idea of consecration, a kind of holy commitment. Dedications have to do with commitment to what defines you; in other words, to a renewal of a sense of purpose and identity, especially for institutions. Originally used for the anniversary dedication of temples and churches, it has become associated with “the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors at Oxford University in June” (O.E.D.) and, by extension to many other schools and colleges throughout the world, such as King’s-Edgehill, founded upon those traditions. It is more commonly known as Commencement. It conveys the double sense of beginnings and endings.

“In my end is my beginning,”as the poet, T.S. Eliot puts it. For “what we call the beginning is often the end/ And to make an end is to make a beginning./The end is where we start from.” The end really means purpose. The telos or end, as Aristotle teaches, is that for which something exists. Of course, some parents may be very definite about what they think you are meant to be, like a certain lady who was walking down the street with her two grandchildren when a friend stopped to ask her how old they were. To which she replied, “The doctor is five and the lawyer is seven.” Does that sound at all familiar?

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Barnabas the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Barnabas the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD God Almighty, who didst endue thy holy Apostle Barnabas with singular gifts of the Holy Spirit: Leave us not, we beseech thee, destitute of thy manifold gifts, nor yet of grace to use them alway to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 11:22-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:12-16Veronese, Miracle of St. BarnabasArtwork: Paolo Veronese, The Miracle of Saint Barnabas, c. 1566. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France.

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Sermons

Sermon for Pentecost, 4:00pm Choral Evensong

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness”

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness,” St. Paul tells us, strengthening us in our prayers and in our thinking, strengthening us in heart and mind. Such is the meaning of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, the strengthener, we might say. Isaiah, too, signals this twofold aspect of the Spirit’s strengthening work. The so-called sevenfold gifts of the Spirit speak to the spiritual reality of our humanity in terms of our reason and our will.

In 1662, at the time of the Restoration after the bitter English civil war which saw bishops and the Prayer Book outlawed for fifteen years, the Prayer Book was restored with a few small but important changes. Provision was made for a service for Adult Baptism, “For Those of Riper Years,” as it is quaintly expressed. There was also an addition made to the liturgy for The Ordination of Priests. It was the Bishop of Durham’s, John Cosin’s, translation of a medieval hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus. “Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,/ And lighten with celestial fire./ Thou the anointing Spirit art,/ Who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart…” What are those gifts? The gifts of the Spirit are taken from Isaiah in our lesson this evening: “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord,” to which the Greek translation, known as the Septuagint, had added a seventh gift, piety or devotion. The concept of the seven gifts of the Spirit belong to the spirituality of the life of the Church. The seven-fold gifts have to do with ourselves as spiritual and intellectual beings, tasked with thinking and doing, knowing and loving, we might say. And all by the inspiration of God the Holy Ghost who keeps us in the communion of God himself.

This is the great wonder and mystery of Pentecost. We do not need to be defined by the world or by our self-preoccupations and actions but by the God whose love and grace are poured out upon the Church in the wonder of Pentecost. We are to know and feel that love and spirit even in the midst of a broken and troubled world where we are too much with the world and too much with ourselves.

Paul’s profound words are familiar from the Prayer Book Burial Office as one of the lessons often read at funerals. They recall us to “the grandeur of God” to put it in the words of the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. In the face of “the bent world” of sin and folly, of destruction and death, we are reminded of our life in the Spirit and of ourselves as spiritual creatures called to love and learn and to love and serve. Nothing, Paul emphasizes, can “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Such is the meaning of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We are strengthened in the love of God in Christ Jesus, strengthened to pray “Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire/ and lighten with celestial fire.”

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness”

Fr. David Curry
Choral Evensong, Pentecost
June 8th, 2014

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