Year: 2014

Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday in Advent

The collect for today, the Third Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 11:2-10

van Balen, John Preaches in the ForestArtwork: Hendrik van Balen, John Preaches in the Wilderness, c. 1622. Oil on panel, Altarpiece for Woodworkers’ Guild, Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp. Photograph taken by admin, 13 October 2014.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”

These are Elizabeth’s words upon the occasion of Mary coming “with haste into the hill country of Judaea” to visit her aged cousin just after the Angel Gabriel announced that she who is “highly favoured” is to “conceive in [her] womb” and “give birth to a child who will be called holy, the Son of God.”

And yet, today we commemorate another conception, the conception of Mary herself. How paradoxical that we should commemorate an event which has no biblical basis whatsoever in the week of The Second Sunday in Advent, the Sunday that signals so strongly an Anglican sensibility about the centrality of the Scriptures as revelation, about the Anglican understanding of sola scriptura, we might say! How to reconcile that strong sensibility of the purpose and the defining force of the Scriptures with this non-biblical feast?

It signals to us, I think, that sola scriptura is to be understood creedally or doctrinally and not just in a positivistic or literalist fashion. The Scriptures are God’s word “written for our learning” and part of that learning has to do with our thinking upon the Word of God in all the fullness of its meaning. That means the Creeds, themselves an intellectual reflection upon the Scriptures without which it would be hard to say how the Scriptures are the Scriptures beyond dogmatic assertion and which provide us with a way to think the Scriptures without getting bogged down in a quagmire of contradictions. No. There is a deeper purpose and meaning to sola scriptura at least in some of its Anglican forms.

That deeper purpose and meaning has altogether to do with the priority of doctrine. Mary is absolutely critical to the meaning and understanding of God coming to us in “the Word made flesh.” There is no thinking upon the Incarnation without due regard to the role and place of Mary. She is “the Mother of God” as orthodox theology insists, “blessed among women,” as Elizabeth proclaims. And what is her blessedness? That she is “the handmaid of the Lord,” the one who says ‘yes’ to God, and whose ‘yes’ results in Christ’s conception and holy birth, He who is Lord and Saviour, both God and Man; “God of God,” to be sure, but man through her. He is the Lord with us because the Lord is with her.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The collect for today, the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (source):

Michelangelo, Madonna and Child, BrugesAlmighty and everlasting God,
who stooped to raise fallen humanity
through the child-bearing of blessed Mary:
grant that we, who have seen thy glory
revealed in our human nature
and thy love made perfect in our weakness,
may daily be renewed in thine image
and conformed to the pattern 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 Lesson: Proverbs 8:22-35
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:26-28

Artwork: Michelangelo Buonarotti, Madonna and Child, 1504-5. Marble, Church of Our Lady, Bruges. Photograph taken by admin, 9 October 2014.

Originally intended for the Cathedral of Siena, but the Mouscron family of Bruges bought it and gave it to the Church of Our Lady. It is one of the few works by Michelangelo outside Italy and the only one to leave Italy during the artist’s lifetime.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

“Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away”

Strong words, but then, this is a day of strong words, strong words reminding us of the strength and power of God’s Word coming to us in judgment and in hope.

“Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,” St. Paul tells us in a powerful passage signifying the fundamental idea of a theology of revelation, a point by no means lost on the architect of common prayer and the author of the fine and wonderful collect for The Second Sunday in Advent, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. The collect captures and establishes an entire Anglican sensibility about the purpose of Scripture as revelation. Something is made known to us about the high things of God and about our lives with God in the witness of the Scriptures and through the creedal tradition of the Church faithful to that witness. The issue for our day is whether we are willing to hear and receive that Word coming so powerfully to us.

“That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” Hope. Hope for something more beyond the struggles and limits of human experience. And yet there can be no hope without the theme of judgment awakening us to the reality of the human situation, described so powerfully and accurately in the Gospel. There shall be, it seems, “upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth”. It seems? Let’s be frank. There is much to disturb and trouble us in our own world and day, in our own church and country, in our own hearts and souls. To deny this would be utter folly.

It would also mean to deny the true desire of our hearts which is always for something more beyond the agony and the pain of the conflicts and divisions within and among ourselves. But where the Word of God is faithfully proclaimed and the Sacraments faithfully celebrated, there and then “know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand”. Such are the signs of the presence of God with us. These lessons are a strong reminder to us of the very nature of the liturgy and its purpose. It is about our being faithfully with the one who comes in judgment and in hope.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 8 – 14 December

Monday, December 8th, Conception of the BVM
6-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, December 9th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies – Parish Hall
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, December 11th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 14th, Third Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Choral Evensong – Christ Church

Upcoming Event:

Friday, December 19th
7:00pm Capella Regalis Christmas Concert, “To Bethlehem with Kings”. $10.00. Pulled Pork Supper & Concert (5:30-6:30, concert at 7:00) $15.00; (Supper only – $ 10.00).

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Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday in Advent

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

BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 21:25-33

Kerricx, Confessional Showing Last JudgmentArtwork: Willem Kerricx the Elder and WiIlem Ignatius Kerricx, Confessional showing the Last Judgment, before 1720, St. Paul’s Church, Antwerp. Photograph taken by admin, 13 October 2014.

The Christ of the Last Supper stands above the priest’s box accompanied by a trumpet-blowing angel. In front, on the left, St. Albertus Magnus, who founded the original St. Paul’s Church in 1276, makes a gesture of greeting and welcome. Between him and the Madonna and Child on the right appear two angels symbolising important virtues. Honesty, to the right, shows her true face and bears instruments of penitence. Humility, to the left, with head bowed, tramples on a laurel wreath of worldly accolades and holds the lamb of meekness and a fives ball: “and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). Against the wall, the notorious, remorseful sinners St. Mary Magdalene, King David, the Prodigal Son and the Repentant Thief encourage the confessant to confess all.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Nicholas, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Nicholas (d. c. 326), Bishop of Myra (source):

Almighty Father, lover of souls,
who didst choose thy servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church,
that he might give freely out of the treasures of thy grace:
make us mindful of the needs of others
and, as we have received, so teach us also to give;
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: 1 St. John 4:7-14
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:13-16

Paolo Veronese, St. Nicholas Named BishopArtwork: Paolo Veronese, Saint Nicholas Named as the Bishop of Myra, c. 1582. Oil on canvas, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. (Originally in now-demolished church of San Nicolo della Lattuga at the Frari.)

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Sermons

The Themes of Nativity and Resurrection in P.D. James’ The Children of Men, Part I

This is the first of a two-part Advent Programme.  The second part, presented on 16 December, is posted here. Both parts have been combined into a single pdf document which can be downloaded here.

Advent Programme at Christ Church – 2014
The Themes of Nativity and Resurrection in P.D.James’ The Children of Men
Part I

“What saith the Scripture”

Last week, a much celebrated English writer, Dame P.D. James passed away (Nov 27th, 2014). An accomplished novelist in the genre of detective mysteries, she also tried her hand at writing in the style of Jane Austen in a late novel, Death Comes to Pemberley, with mixed results, perhaps, though laudably so, I think. But it is another novel outside her detective fiction that warrants our attention in Advent. It is The Children of Men which had the fortune or misfortune of being made into a movie which, as the culture critic Mark Steyn notes, managed to miss the point of her novel almost completely. As he quips, the Baroness was the first to write on barrenness. It serves as a metaphor for the culture of our world and day. It is about a kind of spiritual barrenness, the counter to which can only be found in the Word of God coming to us which is what Advent is all about.

Her 1992 novel The Children of Men is, in many ways, a contemporary mystery play, at once of the Nativity, but also of the Resurrection. Medieval mystery plays were important vehicles for conveying the teachings of the Christian Faith, especially to a largely illiterate world. Perhaps they should be revived. One of the last things that Dame James published relates as well to the ways in which the Christian Faith is communicated to the world.

Deeply appreciative of The Book of Common Prayer, she wrote an essay in 2011 for a volume entitled The Book of Common Prayer: Past, Present, & Future upon the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the mother book of the Prayer Books of the Anglican Communion. Her essay, “Through all the Changing Scenes of Life: Living with the Prayer Book,” provides a wonderful witness to the formative nature of the spirituality of the Prayer Book conveyed principally through the power of words. Here is a writer acknowledging one of the most powerful influences on her own thinking and writing and reminding us, too, of the power and nature of words.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Andrew the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who didst give such grace unto thy holy Apostle Saint Andrew, that he readily obeyed the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him without delay: Grant unto us all, that we, being called by thy holy word, may forthwith give up ourselves obediently to fulfil thy holy commandments; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 10:8-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4:18-22

Mildert, St. AndrewA native of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, Andrew was a fisherman, the son of the fisherman John, and the brother of the fisherman Simon Peter. He was at first, along with John the Evangelist, a disciple of John the Baptist. John the Baptist’s testimony that Jesus was the Christ led the two to follow Jesus. Andrew then took his brother Simon Peter to meet Jesus. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, St. Andrew is called the Protokletos (the First Called) because he is named as the first disciple summoned by Jesus into his service.

At first Andrew and Simon Peter continued to carry on their fishing trade, but the Lord later called them to stay with him all the time. He promised to make them fishers of men and, this time, they left their nets for good.

The only other specific reference to Andrew in the New Testament is at St. Mark 13:3, where he is one of those asking the questions that lead our Lord into his great eschatological discourse.

In the lists of the apostles that appear in the gospels, Andrew is always numbered among the first four. He is named individually three times in the Gospel of St. John. In addition to the story of his calling (John 1:35-42), he, together with Philip, presented the Gentiles to Christ (John 12:20-22), and he pointed out the boy with the loaves and fishes (John 6:8).

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Sermons

Sermon for Atlantic Ministry of the Deaf, Christmas service

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, good will towards men”

They are familiar words that belong to the hopes and joys of the Christmas season. We forget, however, that they are Angels’ words, words conveyed on Angels’ wings to shepherds first and from them to us.

Christmas is far more than a one day wonder. Apart from the celebrated twelve days of Christmas, there is the interesting feature of Christmas itself, a festival that embraces three masses, three celebrations that emphasize certain distinct but interrelated features belonging to Christmas. The three masses are variously named but they focus on the Angels’ Mass, the Shepherds’ Mass and the Mass of the Divine Word, Mass here being a word referring to the liturgy. Christmas means simply Christ’s Mass, the celebration of the Incarnation, liturgically speaking, from which the term Christmas has carried over into the reality of the season and even into secular culture.

The Angels’ Mass focuses on the role of the Angels in bringing the news of great wonder to the Shepherds and rejoicing angelically in words which become the basis of the Gloria. “Glory to God and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” Such commemorations by no means exhaust the rich and deep and beautiful meaning of Christmas but they order our contemplations and serve to underscore the great wonder and mystery of Christmas.

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